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HAP-HAZARD. 


BY 


KATE FIELD. 


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'J) jUND 


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BOSTON: ^ 
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 

Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osyood, & Co. 
1873. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, 

BY JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 

in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co., 
Cambridge. 




pebicatet) 



ALL YOUNG WOMEN IN SEARCH OP CAREERS 
OR TITLED HUSBANDS. 




;^ 



^rc^' 



PREFACE. 




EPRODUCED (with revisions) from 
Every Saturday, The New York Trib- 
^ line, and The American Register of 
Paris, the contents of this vohime lay no claim to 
profundity. If their perusal entertains the Ameri- 
can at home, and leads the American abroad to 
commit one folly the less, my highest ambition 

will be realized. 

THE AUTHOR. 

New York, May, 1873. 




COJN^TENTS 



PART I. LEAVES FROM A LECTURER'S NOTE- 
BOOK. 



A Night in a Rocking-Chair 
Travelling Companions 
In the Dark .... 
John Brown's Friends 
True Stories . . . . 
Concerning Audiences 
Going up the Ohio 
Ruminating Animals . 
A Rival Entertainment 
A Lecture on Masks . 



Pagr 

. 11 

21 
. 30 

34 
. 39 

47 
. 5.5 

65 
. 71 

82 



PART U. AMERICANS ABROAD. 



At Sea 93 

A Martyr to Free Speech . . , . . 101 

The Divine Right of Kings, and Kingsley . 105 

Opening of Parliament 115 

Republicanism in England 125 



VUl 



CONTENTS. 



The Thanksgiving Service 

Second TnorGHTs about the Thanksgiving 

Eepublicanism in Parliament . 

An After-Dinner Speech .... 

Specimen Americans . . . . . 

Heat and Impudence 

Sour Grapes and Snobbery 
The Glorious Fourth and so forth . 
Royalty en D:£shabille .... 
Theatre Royal, Berlin .... 

American Folly 

A Train of Thought ..... 

London and the English 

European versus American "Women . 



136 
149 
156 
166 
171 
179 
188 
198 
207 
215 
223 
229 
237 
245 




PART I. 

LEAVES FROM A LECTUREIl'S 
NOTE-BOOK. 



1* 



LEAVES FROM A LECTURER'S 
NOTE-BOOK. 




A NIGHT IN A ROCKING-CHAIR. 

T may be true that America is going to 
perdition ; that all Americans are ras- 
cals ; that there are no American gentle- 
men; that culture, refinement, and social manners 
can only be found in the Old World : but if it be 
true, what an extraordinary anomaly it is that 
women, old and 3^oung, ugly and handsome, can 
travel alone from one end of this great country to 
the other, receiving only such attention as is ac- 
ceptable. Having journeyed up and down the land 
to the extent of twenty thousand miles, I am per- 
suaded that a woman can go anywhere and do any- 
thing, provided she conducts herself properly. Of 
course it would be absurd to deny that it is not 
infiniteh^ more agreeable to be accompanied by 
the "tyrant" called "man"; but when there is 



12 A LECTURER'S NOTE BOOK. 

no tyrant to come to lovely woman's rescue, it is 
astonishing how well lovely woman can rescue 
herself, if she exerts the brain and muscle, given 
her thousands of years ago, and not entirely an- 
nihilated by long disuse. I have been nowhere 
that I have not been treated with greater consid- 
eration than if I had belonged to the other sex. 
There is not a country in Europe of which this 
can be said ; and if a nation's civilization is gauged 
— as the wise declare — by its treatment of wo- 
men, then America, rough as it may be, badly 
dressed as it is, tobacco-chewing as it often is, 
stands head, shoulders, and Jieart above all the 
rest of the world. The Frenchwoman was right 
in declaring America to be le paradis des dames, 
and those Avomen who exalt European gallantry 
above American honesty are as blind to their own 
interests as an owl at high noon. 

There is no royal railroad to lecturing. At best 
it is hard work, but lecture committees " do their 
possible," as the Italians say, to lessen the weight, 
and that " possible " is heartily appreciated by 
such of us as inwardly long for a natural bridge 
between stations and hotels. A woman is never 
so forlorn as when getting out of a car or entering 
a strange hotel. 

However, there never w^as a rule without its ex- 



A NIGHT IN A ROCKING-CHAIR. 13 

ception, and though courtesy has marked the ma- 
jority of lecture committees for its own, a lecturer 
may occasionally find himself stranded upon a 
desert of indifference, and languish for the com- 
forts of a home not twenty miles distant. Thus 
it happened that once upon arriving at my des- 
tination when the shades of evening were falling 
fast, and glancing about for the customary smil- 
ino- 2-entlemen who smooth out the rough places 
by carrying bags, superintending the transporta- 
tion of luggage, and driving you to your abiding- 
place in the best carriage of the period, I found no 
gentlemen, smiling or otherwise, to deliver me 
from my own ignorance. 

"Carriage, ma'am]" screamed a Jehu in top- 
boots ornamented with a grotesque tracery of mud. 
Well, yes, I would take a carriage; so up I 
clambered and sat down upon what in the dark- 
ness I supposed was a seat, but what gave such 
palpable evidences of animation in howls and at- 
tempts at assault and battery, as to prove its 
right to be called a boy. "An' sure the lady 
didn't mane to hurt ye, Jimmy," -expostulated 
something that turned out to be the boy's mother, 
whereupon a baby and a small sister of the small 
boy sent forth their voices in unison with that of 
their extinguished brother. 



14 A LEC TUBER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

" Driver, let me get out," I said pathetically. 

"Certainly, ma'am, but where will you go to'? 
There ain't no other carriage left." 

True ; and I remained, and when I was asked 
where I wanted to stop, I really did not know. 
Was there a hotel 1 Yes. Was there more than 
one hotel ] No. I breathed more freely, and said 
I would go to the hotel. 

The driver evidently entertained a poor opinion 
of my mental capacity, for he mumbled to him- 
self that " people who did n't know w^here they 
was agoin' had nuff sight better stay at home," 
and deposited me at the hotel with a caution 
against pickpockets. This was sufficiently humil- 
iating, yet were there low^er depths. Entering 
the parlor, I found it monopolized by a young- 
lady in green silk and red ribbons, and a pink 
young man with his hair parted in the middle and 
his shirt-bosom resplendent with brilliants of the 
last water. They were at the piano, singing 
" Days of Absence " in a manner calculated to 
depress the most buoyant spirits. I rang the 
bell, and the green young lady and pink young 
man began on the second verse. No answer. 
Again I rang the bell, and the songsters began on 
the third verse. No answer. Once more I rang 
the bell, and the green young lady and pink young 



A NWIIT IN A ROCKINa-CJIAIR.. 10 

man piped uj^oii the touching la}^ of " No one to 
love." Little cared those "two souls with but a 
single thought, two hearts that beat as one," for 
the third heart and soul, victim of misplaced con- 
fidence. Ring ! I rang that bell until I ached to 
be a man for one brief moment. Does a man ever 
endure such torture 1 No. He puts on his hat, 
walks into the hotel office, gives somebody a piece 
of his mind, and demands the satisfaction of a 
gentleman. But a woman can go to no office. 
She must remain up stairs and cultivate patience 
on hunger and thirst and a general mortification 
of the senses. "Victory, or destruction to the 
bell ! " I said at last, and pulled the rope with the 
desperation of a maniac. 

" Did you ring 1 " asked a mild clerk, enter- 
ing on the tips of his toes as if there were not 
enough of him to warrant so extravagant an ex- 
penditure as the use of his whole sole. Did I 
ring 1 I who had been doing nothing else for half 
an hour ! I who had but forty-five minutes in 
which to eat my supper and dress for the lecture I 

Presenting my card, I desired the mild clerk to 
show me to my room. The mild clerk was exceed- 
ingly sorry, but the committee had left no order, 
and there was not a vacant room in the house ! 

" What am I to do 1 " I asked in agony of spirit. 
"I must have a room." 



16 . A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. . 

Must is an overpowering word. Only say must 
with all the emphasis of which it is capable, and 
longings are hkely to be realized. 

Well, the mild clerk did n't know but as how he 
might turn out and let me have his room. 

Blessed man ! Had I been pope, he should have 
been canonized on the spot. Following him up 
several steep flights of stairs, lighted by a kerosene 
lamp that perfumed the air as only kerosene can, 
I was at last ushered into a room where sat a 
yoimg girl knitting. She seemed to be no more 
astonished at my appearance than were the chairs 
and table, merely remarking, when we were left 
alone, " That 's my father. I suppose you won't 
have any objections to my staying here as long as 
I please." How could I, an interloper, say " no " 
to the rightful proprietor of that room % I smiled 
feebly, and the damsel pursued her knitting with 
her fingers and me w4th her eyes, until everything 
in the room seemed to turn into eyes. The fright- 
ful thought came o'er me that perhaps my com- 
panion was "our own correspondent" for the 
" Daily Slasher ! " — a thought that sent my 
supper down the wrong way, deprived me of 
appetite, and made me thankful that my back 
hair did not come off ! The damsel sat and sat, 
knitted and knitted, until she had superintended 



A NIGHT JN A HOCKING -CHAIR. 17 

every preparation, and then, like an Arab, silently 
stole away. 

What nextl Why, the committee called for 
me at the appointed hour, seemed blandly igno- 
rant of the fact that they had not done their whole 
duty to woman, and maintained that walking was 
much better than driving. The wind blew, dust 
sought shelter within the recesses of eyes and 
ears and nose, but patient Griselda could not 
have behaved better than I. In fact, a W'Omau 
who lectures must endure quietly what a singer 
or actress would stoutly protest against, for the 
reason that lecturing brings down upon her the 
taunt of being " strong-minded," and any assertion 
of rights or exhibition of temper is sure to be 
misconstrued into violent hatred of men and an 
insane desire to be President of the United States. 
This can hardly be called logic, but it is truth. 
Logic is an unknown qiTantity in the ordinary 
public estimation of women lecturers. 

Inwardly cross and outwardly cold, I delivered 
my lecture, and went back to that much-populated 
room, thinking that at least I should obtain a few 
hours' sleep before starting off at " five o'clock in 
the morning," — a nice hour to sing about, but a 
horrible one at which to get up. I approached 
the bed. Shade of that virtue which is next to 



18 A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

godliness ! the linen was — was — yes, it was — 
second-hand ! and calmly reposing on a pillow of 
doubtful color, my startled vision beheld an 

" . . . . iigly, creepin', blastit wonner, 
Detested, shnnn'd, by saunt an' sinner." 

That I should come to this ! I sought for a bell. 
i\.las, there was none ! Should I scream 1 No, 
that might bring out the fire-engines. Should I 
go in search of the housekeeper 1 How to find 
her at that hour of the night 1 No ; rather than 
wander about a strange house in a strange place, 
I would sit up. Of course there was a rocking- 
chair ; in that I took refuge, and there I sat with 
a quaint old-fashioned clock for company, with 
such stout lungs as to render sleep an impossibil- 
ity. No fairy godmother came in at the keyhole 
to transform my chair into a couch and that talk- 
ative clock into a handmaiden. No ghosts be- 
guiled the weary hours. Eleven, twelve, one, two, 
three, four ! As the clock struck this last hour, a 
porter pounded on the door, and, not long after, I 
was being driven through the cold, dark morning 
to a railroad station. My Jehu was he of the 
previous day, and a very nice fellow he turned 
out to be. "I did n't know it was you yesterday, 
you see, miss, or I would n't have said nothing 



A NIGHT IX A ROCKING-CHAIR. 19 

about pickpockets. You dou't look like a lecturer, 
you see, and that 's what 's the matter." 

" Indeed, and how ought a lecturer to look 1 " 

" Well, I don't exactly know, but I always sup- 
posed they did n't look like you. Reckon you 
don't enjoy staying around here in the dark, so 
I '11 just wait here till the train comes," and there 
that good creature remained until the belated 
train snatched me up and whisked off to the city. 
When the express agent passed through the car to 
take the baggage-checks, it was as good as a play 
to see the different ways in which people woke 
up. Some turned over and would n't wake up at 
all ; others sat bolt upright and blinked ; some 
were very cross, and wondered why they could not 
be let alone ; others, again, rubbed their eyes, 
scratched their heads, said " All right," and would 
have gone to sleep again had not the agent shaken 
them into consciousness. 

" Where do you go ^" asked the agent of a quiet 
old gentleman sitting before me, who had previously 
given up his checks. 

'^Yes, exactly; that's my name," replied the 
old gentleman. 

" Where do 3'ou go ] " again asked the agent in 
a somewhat louder tone. 

" Exactly, I told you so." And the old gentleman 



20 A LEC TUBER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

put a pocket handkerchief over his face as ii pre- 
liminary to sleep. 

^'Well, I never," exclaimed the agent, who re- 
turned to the charge. " I asked you where you 
wanted to go 1 " 

" Precisely ; that 's my name." 

" Confound your name ! " muttered the agent. 
" You're either deaf or insane, and I guess you 're 
deaf." So putting his mouth to the old gentle- 
man's ear, he shouted, " Where — do — you — 
want — to — go '? " 

" 0, really, the House," was the mild an- 
swer to a question that so startled everybody else 
as to cause one man to jump up and cry, '' Fire ! " 
very much to the gratification of his fellow-passen- 
gers. There is nothing more pleasing to human 
beings than to see somebody else make himself 
ridiculous, and the amusement extracted from the 
contemplation of that car-load of men and women 
almost compensated me for the previous expe- 
rience. 

I have since travelled in the far West, but have 
never looked upon the counterpart of that New 
England hotel. 



TRAVELLING COMPANIONS. 




AVING taken leave of a friend who had 
referred to my lecture of the previous 
nifi'ht in a somewhat louder voice than 
harmonized with my feelings, a severe woman in 
spectacles, occupying a seat in front of me, ex- 
claimed, ^^ Be yoM a lecturer'?" in so stentorian a 
tone as to startle the passengers into acute hear- 
ing, and make me long for a convenient trap-door 
by which to disappear after the comfortable man- 
ner of stage ghosts. 

Yes, I was a lecturer, and not at all ashamed 
of it ; but had that amiable and considerate woman 
asked me whether I had murdered my grandfather 
and disposed of the remains to enterprising medical 
students, she could not have given greater offence 
to taste. I envied the Avasherwoman who sat be- 
side me nursing her baby and her basket, regard- 
less of, and disregarded by, inquisitive eyes. 

'•I say, he you a lecturer]" again demanded 



!^2 A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

this awful person. " That 's twice I 've asked you 
the same question." 

Dumb with amazement, wondering where that 
"womanly tact" was about which we hear so 
much and see so little, I bowed a "yea" that 
would have done no discredit to the Commenda- 
tore in Don Giovanni. 

" Well, why did n't you say so in the first place ? 
Might I w^quire your name % " 

Give my name ? No ; I would have gone " a 
Martha to the stakes" first. How every neigh- 
boring ear elongated and grew into an interroga- 
tion-mark ! Even the cars as they sped along- 
seemed to echo, " What 's your name % what 's your 
name '? what 's your name 1 " 

" Might I iQiqiiire your name 1 " 

" No, madam, you may not." 

"Well, that beats all. I didn't mean no harm. 
I thought you might write for " The Revolution." 
What 's your opinion about matters and things in 
general 1 " 

Good Americans who read Dickens's " American 
Notes " and " Martin Chuzzlewit," virtuously 
brand immortal Boz as — as — well, as a liar. 
Eather was he the lyre played upon, making such 
music as the players invoked. Here before me 
sat one of Dickens's characters, drawn to the life. 



TRAVELLING COMPANIONS. 23 

Matters and things in general ! What was I to 
say 1 Where should I begin 1 With the creation 
of the world ] " Madam," I at last answered in 
an undertone, looking like a rock and feeling like 
a disembodied gooseberry, " I have no opinions." 

"No opinioDS ! " exclaimed the awful person 
with severity in her eye and contempt sharply 
playing about the corners of her mouth. "If 
you 've no opinions, how on airth can you lecture % " 

Had I been a worm, the awful person would 
have crushed me beneath her foot. Being nothing 
more than human, she turned her back upon me 
as upon a creature lost to all sense of her mission 
on earth. 

"You done just right," whispered the good- 
hearted washerwoman, while her baby expressed 
its sympathy by putting a dear, dirty little finger 
in my eye and crowing triumphantly. "J/y 
opinion is that this world would n't be so hard to 
live in if folks would mind their own business." 

Ah, even the poor washerwoman had had her 
measure of interference ! Perhaps some rival laun- 
dress had deprived her of custom by innuendoes 
regarding her starch. 

The worst thing after being interviewed is 
being swindled by hackmen. If a woman ever 
looks like Mrs. Gummidge, if she ever feels likq 



24 A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

"a lone, lorn creetur," helf)lessly conscious that 
everything tmcst go " contrairey," it is in the 
august presence of a hackman. Talk not of the 
equality of the sexes so long as any woman in the 
land can be bullied out of twenty-five cents by "a 
free and independent voter " spelling his name 
with an X. Of what avail is mind in the pres- 
ence of muscle 1 If a ma,n can knock you down, 
are you not in his power ^ Unless his reason con- 
trol his biceps, are you not his slave 1 I 'd rather 
criticise Shakespeare to his face, I 'd rather go up 
in a balloon, I 'd rather speak disrespectfully of 
Boston Common, than indulge in an altercation 
with the common variety of North American 
hackman. He is the modern vampyre, and women 
are his prey. He grows fat on swindling, and 
proves that virtue is not its own reward. I do 
not- expect much from Albany. The New York 
Legislature convenes there, which is enough to 
demoralize even hackmen j but there is a driver in 
Albany, and one out West, that are as great a 
trial to my feelings as Job Trotter was to Sam 
Weller's. Indeed I may say greater, for Sam 
finally got the better of Job, and I never can be 
even with those hackmen. It is a physical impos- 
sibility. Ages hence they may come to me with 
apologies, but by that time I shall have become an 



TRAVELLING COMPANIONS. 25 

angel and shall take no carnal satisfaction in their 
humiliation. 

Yes, and there is a woman whom I expect to 
meet in another and a better world, and to for- 
give. She is a vixen now. How long it will take 
her to soften into something else I cannot say, but 
as she has all eternity before her, she must come 
to it eventually. It was between one and two 
o'clock in the morning, and having just arrived 
from Somewhere, with no possibility of going Else- 
where for six hours, it was rather necessary to ob- 
tain a lodging at the hotel adjoining the railroad 
station. 

"Very sorry, ma'am," said the landlord, "but 
there is not a spare bed in the house. Never was 
so crowded." 

" Surely you can find a lounge in the parlor." 

The landlord scratched his head, — why is it 
that men generally scratch their heads when they 
are in difficulty] — and replied, finally, "Well, 
yes, there is a sofa in the parlor. It's pretty hard 
to sit on, so I can't recommend it to sleep on, but 
it's the best I can do." 

It was one of those slippery horsehair sofas, 
chronic throughout the country, that are much 
better adapted to "coasting" purposes than to 
pei'manent investment. 



26 A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

I was conducted up stairs, and, after surveying 
the aforesaid sofa, was about to say ''good night" 
to the landlord, who seemed to be laboring under 
great nervous excitement, wben a door opened op- 
posite, and there appeared a vision of loveliness in 
the shape of a thin female head done up in frilled 
nightcap and yellow curl-papers. 

" Tom," exclaimed the head, — " Tom, did n't I 
tell you that you were never to give up the parlor 
without consulting me 1 How dare you *? The 
parlor sha' n't be turned into a hospital if I can 
help it, and I will help it, that's more. You 
thought I was asleep, did you 1 Well, I '11 just 
give you to understand that I 'm never asleep 
when I oughtn't to be. You've no business to 
take in people at this hour of the night ; and 
when j)eople ivill travel nights, they must take 
the consequences. I suppose it's a circus, and 
of all iniquities that 's the worst ! If you dare, 
Tom, I '11 — " The head disappeared with a slam, 
leaving the last sentence as much of an hy- 
pothesis as the body to which that extraordi- 
nary head belonged. Never before had I seen a 
henpecked husband. May I never behold an- 
other ! It is almost as horrible a spectacle as 
seeing a man beat his wife — when she does n't 
deserve it; for I believe that some wives do de- 



TRAVELLING COMPANIONS. 27 

serve beating, — this one, for example. But the 
"vvorld is upside down. The angelic men and wo- 
men insist upon marrying their opposites, — de- 
mons; consequently the angels suffer and the 
demons carry matters with a high hand. If like 
would only mate like, the elect might gaze upon 
a grand moral spectacle suggestive of the mem- 
orable encounter of Kilkenny cats, but alas ! jus- 
tice, like love and fortune, goes it Mind ; hence 
" Tom ! " He said never a word, but looked un- 
utterable things, and I relieved him from a most 
embarrassing position by declaring my intention 
of passing the remainder of the night in the rail- 
road station. "Tom" heaved a deep sigh, escorted 
me to this charming retreat, stirred up the fire, 
and left me to my reflections. As the room 
boasted of a horsehair sofa, own cousin to the 
one too good for me at the hotel, I might have 
given myself quite a "surprise party" by sleep- 
ing, had not my neighbors prevented any such 
consummation. They were a family of Irish emi- 
grants. The father lay in one corner snoring as I 
did not suppose it possible for any human being 
to snore. He never could have accomplished as 
much without great natural ability combined with 
constant practice. The mother sat in a rocking- 
chair, nursing a baby that, like seraphim and clieru- 



28 A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

bim, continually did cry. The effect produced by 
father and child was not unlike a duet between 
a locomotive and a shrill steam-whistle. Two 
larger children — boys of course of active tem- 
peraments — added greatly to the hilarity of the 
occasion by playing horse with the poker and 
tongs, occasionally stirring up their father with 
both instruments until he growled and consigned 
his offspring to a place not mentioned in polite 
circles. When the dawn came, as it did at last, 
that father got up, shook himself, saluted his 
wife with an oath, bade her come along " with the 
brats," and shuffled out of the room. As uncom- 
plaining as " Tom," and more badly used, the poor 
wife rose, and with the baby in her arms and the 
two boys clinging to her skirts followed her lord 
and master into the cold, gray morning. Is ma- 
ternity divine when it entails such treatment and 
perpetuates drunkenness and vice ? 

Virago and brute rendered my breakfast even 
more unpalatable than it was originally. A coun- 
try steak suggests fried leather rather than beef, 
and is graphically described by John G. Saxe as 
an infringement on Goodyear's patent ! There 
never was a lecture as hard to swallow as the 
beefsteak of the period. 

As I stepped into the cars that morning, " Tom " 



TRAVELLING COMPANIONS. 



29 



came to me, hat in hand, saying, " Please don't 
hold me responsible for what happened last niglit. 
I feel worse than 3'ou do about it, but I can't help 
it." 

I wonder what " Tom " and that poor Irish wo- 
man think about the holy state of matrimony. 




IN THE DARK. 




HE first time I lectured in a church, and 
was asked to occupy the pulpit, I re- 
fused. There is an eternal fitness in 
things, and jokes, however mild, when launched 
from a high box pulpit, become thoroughly de- 
moralized. They lose their spirits, and you feel 
as if you were assisting at the funeral of your own 
thoughts. Ascend a pulpit *? sooner a scaffold ! 
So I delivered my lecture on one side of the pulpit, 
in consequence of which I succeeded in displeasing 
a larger number of persons in a shorter amount 
of time than ever before or since. Like Bottom, 
one third of the audience saw a voice, and noth- 
ing else, the huge pulpit obstructing any other 
view^ That well-intentioned action led to such 
disastrous results as to persuade me that the 
majority of people hear with their eyes. Con- 
sequently, wdien I next lectured in a church, I 
screwed my courage to the sticking-place, other- 



JX THE DARK. 31 

wise the pulpit. It was an overawing structure, 
and I felt that I ought to apologize for not bring- 
ing my sermon. Previous to the lecture the choir 
sang " I want to be an Angel" ; and if, as Raphael 
hints in certain paintings, angels finish behind the 
ears, I certainly bore a family likeness to them in 
the eyes of the audience, to whom nothing but 
my head was visible. I endeavored to be more 
imposing by standing on a stool ; but after walking 
off the stool once or twice, a catastrophe that 
caused my entire momentary disappearance, discre- 
tion obliged me to abandon the attempt. Misfor- 
tunes never yet came singly. This was an excel- 
lent opportmiity to give a lesson in discipline, and 
Fate seized it. I had read about two thirds 
through my manuscript, when the gas went out 
suddenly and left us in total darkness ! Laughing 
is better than crying, so I laughed, and ever^^body 
laughed. Finding the stool better to sit than to 
stand upon, I turned to it for consolation until 
something should " turn up," and listened to the 
murmurings of hundreds of voices that sounded 
like distant waves breaking upou the shore. All 
attempts to light the gas were useless. It had re- 
tired for the night, and in the course of eight long 
minutes one feeble kerosene lamp made darkness 
visible. 



32 A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

" That 's the best we can do," said a voice ac- 
companying the lamp. " The gas has gin out all 
over town, and tallow is riz." 

" But how is the lamp to be steadied % The 
cushion of the pulpit is round ! " 

This new development somewhat perplexed the 
voice, that finally replied with a sigh, "• Well, I 
suppose we must have up the Bible " I and up the 
good book came. Balancing the book on the 
cushion enabled us to balance the lamp on the 
book, and by that sickly light T addressed the in- 
visible, keeping one eye fixed on the lamp lest it 
should slide off the Bible and commit us to kero- 
sene flames. 

By some queer coincidence, the first words I 
uttered were. Now try again I Of course the 
audience believed it to be an interpolation, and 
again we all laughed. Before the conclusion of 
the lecture, however, no less than three kerosene 
lamps shed their refulgent rays upon the multi- 
tude, and we retired in good order. 

And what happened next day % Owing to the 
urbanity of grand and lofty magnates, an express 
train was good-naturedly stopped at a way station 
where I w^as engaged for that evening. I had no 
sooner alighted than a number of persons sur- 
rounded me with mouths agape and interrogatory 
eyes. 



IN TUB DARK. 33 

" Who 's dead % Where 's the body 1 " asked a 
small, thin man, breathless with running and ex- 
citement. 

"'Dead'? 'Body'? What do you mean 1 No- 
body is dead that I am aware of." 

" Well, we all thought somebody must be dead, 
for that afternoon express never stops unless 
there 's a corpse aboard, and I looked out for it 
the fust thing. If nobody 's dead," continued my 
interrogator in an injured and disappointed tone, 
" you must be somebody.-'' 

" Reckon I can guess who it is," piped up a 
precocious young gentleman of twelve. " It 's 
her ! " pointing from me to a very big bill of the 
evening's lecture. 

" Should n't wonder," muttered the original in- 
terlocutor, at which discovery the promiscuous 
assembly dispersed, evidently feeling I was not 
all their fancy painted. Who is all anybody's 
fancy paints % My fancy has had so many shocks, 
that now I am thankful when my gods and god- 
desses are not very wicked as to morals and very 
frightful as to appearance. 



9* 




JOHN BROWN'S FRIENDS. 




LACES where, upon entering, I have left 
all hope behind, some incident will ever 
after associate with pleasant memories. 
" Not a person in this audience," thought I to 
myself one night, "has the least sympathy with 
old John Brown." A moment later and there 
stood before me a fine-looking man saying, " I am 
the clergyman you spoke of this evening in refer- 
rino; to the burial of John Brown." 

"And I," remarked another man, "was the only 
person in this town that closed his store and 
draped it in mourning the day John Brown was 
executed. They threatened to raise a riot ; but 
they took it out in swearing and hating me." 
Such a quiet little man as he was ! And it is just 
such quiet little men that are the bravest. An- 
other like him came to me elsewhere, when T was 
doubting the audience, saying, " I am your debtor 
to-night. When John Brown was hung, I was 



JOHN BROWN'S FRIENDS. 35 

the first to call an indignation meeting, and hot 
work we had. The very people that have listened 
to you to-night called us cut-throats and trai- 
tors." The only hiss I ever heard was drowned by 
the musical voice of a young colored girl, who, 
with tears in her eyes, exclaimed, " God bless 
you for telling the truth about John Brown ! " 
The hero of Harper's Ferry has not as many 
friends to-day as he will have fifty years hence, 
but the man who fought a lifetime for one idea 
can wait a century for immortal justice. When, 
before leaving the North Woods, I made a pil- 
grimage to John Brown's farm, I saw his name 
carved on the face of the huge boulder lying at 
the head of his grave, as if cast for the purpose 
from God Almighty's foundry. Plucking roses and 
buttercups that sprang from the giant's heart, I 
turned. What ! that humble, unpainted farm-house 
John Brown's home ! I stood upon the threshold 
and knocked in vain. Trying the door, it opened, 
and, venturing to enter, I saw signs of habitation, 
but none of comfort. There seemed to be no angel 
in the house. A portrait of John Brown, a few 
memorial wreaths, snatched from some recent 
grave, were the only visible remains of sentiment. 
Several men w^ere pitching hay in a field near by, 
and when I hailed them, one sad man came for- 



36 A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

ward to bid me return. He was the owner of the 
form, for John Brown's homestead was no longer 
the property of his famil}^, although it had been 
his wish that there they should remain. 

" I am Alexis Hinckley," said the thin, sad man. 
''My sister married John Brown's son Salmon, 
who went West and is now in California. Mrs. 
Brown was very lonely without any of her chil- 
dren, and, in order to join Salmon, sold the farm 
in 1863 for eight h mid red dollars. She did not 
w^ant it to go out of the family, and so I bought 
it. But I do not feel like staying here any longer. 
I buried my wife last wdnter. The place is not 
what it used to be, and, in fact, I must sell it. I 
have spent money upon it, and I have offered it 
for two thousand dollars." 

" Does that plat of land go with the farm 1 " I 
asked, looking from the window to the spot where 
"John Brown's body lay mouldering in the grave." 

"0 no ! That is reserved by Mrs. Brown. There 
are two hundred and forty-four acres, and one 
thousand dollars' w^orth of timber." 

So John Brown's farm was for sale ! 

One month later I told this story in Boston ; 
it was heard in New York, and forty-eight hours 
after the echo reached Gold Street every share 
in the stock was taken. It is fitting, therefore, 



JOHN BROWN'S FRIENDS. 



37 



that the names of those New York men should be 
made public : — 



Isaac H. Bailey .... 


. $100 


John E. Williams 


. 100 


William H. Lee 


100 


George A. Robbins 


. 100 


George Cabot Ward . 


100 


Henry Clews 


. 100 


D. Randolph Martin . 


100 


Le Grand B. Cannon 


. 100 


Charles S. Smith 


100 


S. B. Chittenden . 


. 100 


Isaac Sherman .... 


100 


Jackson S. Schultz 


. 100 


Elliott C. Cowdin . 


100 


Thomas Murphy . 


. 100 


Charles G. Judson 


100 


Salem H. Wales . 


. 100 


Sinclair Tousey 


100 


Horace -B. Claflin . 


. 100 


A Boston Woman 


100 


Kate Field .... 


. 100 



Henceforth and forevermore the farm will be 
held as historic ground, and as proof that even in 
the nineteenth century there is such a thing as 
poetic justice. 

" You will ruin yourself as a lecturer if you 
insist upon eulogizing John Brown," exclaimed a 



38 A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

clever friend, who had often. felt the public pulse 
and feared its fluctuations. "Then let me be 
ruined." Was the prophet right 1 Did I not make 
friends worth all those who hated me for praising 
" the gamest man " GoYernor Wise " ever saw " 1 
I am grateful. and content ! I shall be more con- 
tent when John Brown's farm becomes the centre 
of New York's greatest park. The Adirondacks 
were intended by Nature to be the Eastern pleas- 
ure-ground of the United States. 




TRUE STORIES. 




i|MONG the pleasing features of lecturing, 
as of every other public profession, is ac- 
cidentally *' assisting " at criticisms of 
one's self To see ourselves as others see us is 
the ardent desire of all human beings ; but as cool- 
ing one's eyes and ears at keyholes is " more hon- 
ored in the breach than in the observance," honest 
people are not likely to assist at an exposition of 
unvarnished truth, unless it be by chance. A 
strange sensation comes over you in hearing it. 
You feel as if you were out of your own skin and 
were contemplating a jury sitting in judgment on 
your other self, — holding a species of ante-mortem 
inquest. 

'' Well, I declare ! " said a woman behind whom 
I stood while waiting for the crowd to disperse. 
" Call that lecturing ! Why, she talked just as 
she would any time, just like people in conversa- 
tion : that is n't lecturino:." 



40 A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

" I thought the lecture was good enough," re- 
plied her companion, " but did you ever see such 
affected manners'?" 

It was quite cheering after this dialogue to over- 
hear one committee-man say to another, — I was 
wrapped in furs and quite unknown in conse- 
quence, — "I expected we 'd been sold on this 
lecture, but I declare it was a great deal better 
than I believed it would be," 

" How did you like the lecture 1 " asked a woman 
of a man sitting before me in the cars. 

" 0, pretty well ! " 
' " What was it about 1 " 

"Dickens." 

"What did she say]" 

" Well, she said a good many things. She 
cracked him up a lot, but for my part I don't see 
that he writes any better than other folks." 

" How she does dress ! " exclaimed a woman 
elsewhere. " She wears a train and looks like a 
fashion-plate ! That is n't the way to reform the 
world. No woman has any business to lecture 
who does not wear a short dress. Curls too ! " 

"What do the papers say of last night's lec- 
ture 1 " inquired a gentleman of a lady opposite me 
in a Western car. 

" The Democratic paper speaks very highly of 



TRUE STORIES. 41 

it, but the Eepublican paper finds fault with her 
pronunciation and says she is stage}^" 

" I never knew a Democratic paper to tell the 
truth about anything," answered the gentleman. 

" Lies are their daily bread. What the " G " 

says is always about right. I 'm glad I did n't 

go." 

" Who is she any way 1 " asked one woman of 

another, both being my neighbors in travelling. 

" Why, she 's the daughter of that rich pub- 
lisher, you know. She is n't obliged to lecture. 
She does it for excitement. When she 's at home 
she never can keep still, always going to theatres 
and reporting the plays, which / think is very uu- 
feminine ; and she drives fast horses, and some- 
body told me the other day that she smoked. I 
dare say it 's true, for any woman that will report 
such low things as theatres is quite likely to 
smoke. It 's sad, — is n't it % " 

Yes, it is sad that men and women cannot es- 
cape calumny. Shakespeare never conceived a 
truer line than when he wrote, " It is as easy as 
lying." If people only talked about what they 
knew, a profound silence would settle upon society, 
and a large reward would be offered for an answer 
to the conundrum originally propounded by Pon- 
tius Pilate: "What is truth 1" The onlv con- 



42 A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

solation — poor indeed — is that everybody falls a 
victim to slander. On one occasion a woman came 
up to me after my lecture, saying, "My name 

is . I came here expecting to hear an account 

of Mr. Dickens's domestic relations. He was a 
bad man, a very bad man, and I am ver^/ sorry 
that you, a woman, praise him." " And how 
about Dickens's drinking 1" asked a sharp-visaged 
man. "You know he was a confirmed drunkard." 
It was useless to assert that I did not know any- 
thing of the sort. Poor human nature likes to 
believe the worst of its kind, and there are those 
who feel personally injured at praise of others. 
One touch of scandal makes the whole world kin. 
Only exhibit the weaknesses of the great, and a 
glow of satisfaction suffuses the faces of the little. 
It is proof positive of the noble democratic dogma 
that " one man is as good as another, — and better 
too." 

In one city Dickens was so impopular on ac- 
count of having told the truth about it thirty 
years ago, that I was desired to change my sub- 
ject ; but overcoming prejudice by promising to 
give a second lecture if at the conclusion of 
"Dickens" the audience remained dissatisfied, I 
was allowed to carry out the original programme. 
The second lecture was not called for by the 



TRUE STORIES. 43 

audience. Whether it was because of a change 
of heart or. of complete exhaustion, and conse- 
quent inability to endure the strain of another 
hour, I cannot state with certainty. 

It being a fiict in natural history that all 
creatures hunt in couples, I felt morally certain 
that sooner or later I should find a man in the 
West to match the Yankee who had never heard 
of Dickens. Find him I did in a negro of suave 
manners who waited upon me at a large hotel in 
Ohio. Deep in the contemplation of an advertise- 
ment of the lecture at the bottom of the bill of 
fare, which I regarded with less relish than the 
announcement of " beef, veal, and pork," my pro- 
found studies were interrupted by the unexpected 
appearance of the waiter, who seemed to be de- 
sirous of indulging in conversation. Looking up 
for further enlightenment. Sambo made bold to 
say, " Excuse me, miss, but are you the lady that 
is to lecture to-night % " 

"Yes." 

" I 've read a great deal about you in the 
papers." 

*' Indeed ? The papers, you know, do not 
always tell the truth." 

At this my colored brother grinned, and with a 
gallantry that would have done credit to a courtier 



44 A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

replied, " I am quite sure they have told the truth 
in this instance." 

Ah, I knew what this meant. The flattery was 
not disinterested. My friend wanted passes. 

" Would you like to hear the lecture % " 

Sambo rubbed his hands with satisfaction, de- 
clared he would, and went off to communicate 
with the other waiters, who stood in a corner 
watching the interview. Soon Sambo returned, 
and, scratching his head, said, " Excuse me, miss, 
but I 'd like to have a pass for me and my girl. 
She reads better than I do." 

" Very well. You shall have a pass for two." 

Sambo thanked me profusely, again retired, and 
again returned, scratching his head with greater 
vigor than before. 

" Beg pardon, miss ; but who is this Dickson % 
Is he the 7nan that makes paper collars 1 I 've read 
a great deal about him." 

" Not Dickso?i at all ! V>\Qkens, the great 
novelist." 

Sambo . w\as perplexed; Sambo ruminated; 
Sambo rubbed his right hand up and down his 
riffht leg", and then exclaimed with considerable 
animation, " 0, 1 know ! I suppose he 's the feller 
that writes the Dime Novels ! " 

I gave Sambo a small amount of currency on 



TRUE STORIES. 45 

condition that he would buy Pickwick and read 
it. Alas ! I fear Sambo was a fraud. Two very 
white people presented that pass ; and as Sambo 
did not wait upon me the next morning, I suspect 
he sold the pass at half price and invested in 
whiskey rather than in Pickwick. Mrs. Gamp 
would call him " a twining sarpiant." I forgive 
him. It is perhaps singular that the only ser- 
vants who ever asked for tickets were colored, — 
one old man amusing an audience more than I did, 
I thought, by occasionally rising and exclaiming, 
" Glory ! " 

But if Ohio harbors that deceitful man and 
brother, it is likewise the home of a woman who 
more than makes amends for his depravity. This 
good woman absolutely worships Dickens, burning 
a candle under his portrait as Catholics burn 
candles at the household shrines of the Virgin. 
She reads nothing but Dickens, and when the 
great man came to America she wrote" to him re- 
questing to know whether he intended to visit the 
West. Receiving a reply in Dickens's own hand- 
writing, her joy knew no bounds, and as her hero 
could not leave the East, she declared her inten- 
tion of going to New York. Jones, her husband, 
demurred ; but upon being waked up one night 
and told that, if he did not give her the money to 



46 A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

travel like a Christian, she would walk, Jones 
succumbed. Mrs. Jones went to New York, had 
a private interview with Dickens, attended several 
of his readings, and returned home more rabid 
than ever. When the telegraph brought the 
news of Dickens's sudden decease, she mourned 
for her dearest friend. Not manj^ months after, 
Mrs. Jones's sister died. Owing to the illness of 
this sister's husband, whom she was obliged to 
nnrse, Mrs. Jones could not attend the funeral, 
and on the return of the other members of the 
family, they found her reading in a tearful voice 
to the sick and bereaved man. Was it the Bible ] 
No, Pichioich! and as a relative approached the 
bed Mrs. Jones burst into tears, exclaiming, " The 
saddest part of it all is to think that dear Sarah 
died before I had finished reading ' Martin Chuz- 
zlewit ' to her ; and now she '11 never, never, never 
know how it ends ! 0, it is too bad ! " 




CONCERNING AUDIENCES. 




HE public is a monster more dreadful to 
face than lion, mastodon, or behemoth, 
for what other monsters will do to you is 
always a dead certainty, but this extraordinary 
creature is as inscrutable as fate itself, and can 
no more be calculated upon than the winds of 
heaven or the New York stock market. It has 
more heads than the hydra could multiply in a 
lifetime. There is a different head for every com- 
munity, a different expression for every head ; and 
though you may entertain no very exalted opinion 
of this monster's individual members, yet when 
those members are united in one body, you quail 
before them as before no other potentate. United 
they brand, divided they pall. 

The lecturer's position is exceptional. Actor, 
singer, and reader generally remain sufficiently 
long in one place to establish a certain raioport 
between themselves and their audiences, but the 



LX 



48 - A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

lecturer is a creature of mushroom growth, com- 
ing up in a night and disappearing the next morn- 
ing. His career is a constant series of first appear- 
ances, than which there can be nothing more 
trying to the nerves. Changing Hke a human 
kaleidoscope, he can never judge of the future by 
the past. 

History may repeat itself, but lecturing experi- 
ences never do. Though towns be but a dozen 
miles apart, they have their idiosyncrasies. One 
will receive you -with the warmth of the tropics, 
whereas its neighbor, believing that silence is 
golden, enforces the maxim rigidly, and not until 
the committee or the next day's paper pronounces 
a verdict do you know^ the state of public opinion. 
To command profound attention is supposed to be 
the speaker's greatest triumph ; nevertheless, there 
is no such inspiration as applause, and if lyceum 
audiences fully realized this fact, they woiild be 
more likely to cultivate audible recognition of 
pleasure received. The delight of Continental au- 
diences is their quick response to the artist's 
touch. The Italian " Bravo ! " following instantly 
upon a thought well expressed or deed well done, 
is a perpetual stimulant that cannot fail to pro- 
duce the best results of which the artist is capa- 
ble. In America, the finest orator receives less 



CONCERNING AUDIENCES. 49 

applause than the ordhiary actor or singer. To 
recall them at the conclusion of their peroration 
is rare, even Dickens being no exception. 

Yet the lecturer really needs more extraneous 
support than the dramatic artist. He stands in 
his own person, on a cold, barren platform, un- 
aided by scenic effects or costume, and for an hour 
or more is expected to speak uninterruptedly and 
in such a manner as to constantly entertain. It 
is a tremendous ordeal, and whoever succeeds in 
passing it deserves hearty applause during per- 
formance as well as hearty praise after it. The 
same people who grow boisterous over a me- 
diocre rendering of an English ballad will receive 
new ideas without the changing of a muscle. 
Political references, personal attacks, or broad 
humor, will bring down the house when neat anec- 
dote, wit, and delicate satire fail to extort more 
than a smile. If a lecturer were his own audience, 
how marvellous would be the appreciation ! 

I think it is Mr. Parton who classifies audiences 
into "the still-attentives," "the hard-to-lifts," "the 
quick-responsives," "the won't-applauds," and "the 
get-up-and-go-outs." The higher the order of in- 
telligence, the less applause, but with this class 
there is something in the atmosphere that makes 
the speaker feel at ease. " Still-attentives " are in 
3 D 



60 A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

the majority, while " quick-responsives " form a 
charming minority. University towns are the 
lecturer's boon. Culture combined with young 
blood is prone to enthusiasm. Next in sympathy 
are capitals. Abuse politicians as we may, it is 
no less a fact that audiences containing a large 
percentage of legislators are more intelligently 
alive than almost any others. Combine univer- 
sity with legislature, as in the case of Madison, 
the beautiful capital of Wisconsin, and the lec- 
turer attains the acme of his desires. This refer- 
ence to Madison reminds me of a treasure its His- 
torical Society possesses in the fac-simile of an 
epitaph taken from a tombstone in Williamsport, 
Pennsylvania, and which is too unique to remain 
in obscurity. It touchingly describes the death 
of a youth, killed by a Coifs revolver. The illus- 
tration is worthy of the artist of the period. 




CONCERNING AUDIENCES. 51 

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF 

HENRY HARRIS, 

Born June 27, 1821 of Henry Harris 

and Jane his wife, 

Died on the 4th of May 1837 by the kick of a colt 

in his bowels. 

Peaceable and qniet, a friend to 

his father and mother and respected 

by all who knew him, and went 

to the world where horses 

don't kick, wliere sorrows and weeping 

is no more. 

But a truce to colts; cb nos moutons! It is a 
mistake to suppose that demonstratiou increases 
in the ratio of distance from the Atlantic coast. 
Warmth of manner is not in the least a matter of 
latitude or longitude. Like the good city of Bos- 
ton, the West produces the coldest as well as the 
most responsive of audiences ; but whoever im- 
agines small New England towns to be intellectual- 
ly superior to those in the West that have been 
built up by Yankee energy and enterprise, is 
laboring under a lamentable delusion. Many por- 
tions of the new territory are New England with 
all the modern improvements of generous hos- 
pitality, toleration, frankness, and taking a man 
for what he is, rather than for what, his ancestry 
ivas. " Well, you see," said an Eastern man to a 



52 A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

Chicago merchant, in sounding the praises of a 
recent importation from Philadelphia-, " he comes 
of a very good family. His grandfather was a 
very distinguished man." 

" Was he ? " replied the incorrigible Westerner. 
" That won't wash in these regions. There 's less 
Daddyism here than in any other part of the United 
States. What 's he himself ? " Daddyism is an in- 
spiration. Let it be recorded in the coming Dic- 
tionary of Americanisms. 

Without wishing to believe Buckle's theory, 
that in every age just so many people go to the 
bad, by committing murder, arson, etc., etc., the 
statistics of observation lead me to solemnly as- 
severate that even in the best of audiences one 
person must go to sleep and one person must get 
up and go out. In every instance this one person 
is of the masculine gender. 

The sleeper is middle-aged, frequently gray- 
headed, often given to spectacles. His head wags 
slowly like a reversed pendulum, keeping time to 
the measure of his dreams. As a rule, he dozes 
quietly ; occasionally he snores, and, waking up at 
the sound of his own voice, becomes deliciously 
absurd in his endeavor to look thoroughl}?^ inno- 
cent of the indiscretion. If he can distract at- 
tention from himself by applauding the lecturer. 



CONCERNING AUDIENCES. 53 

he does it with a cordiaUty worthy of imitation, 
and in five minutes more — is wrapped in a child- 
hke slumber. To some constitutions there is no 
narcotic hke a lecture. I wonder that it is not 
prescribed by the regular faculty. The dose is 
generally allopathic, and far less serious in its re- 
sults than " chloral." I am not of those who be- 
lieve that it permanently affects the brain. 

Uhomme qui dort is at least quiet, but the get- 
up-and-go-outer is an unmitigated nuisance for 
whose suppression a law should be passed. He 
waits until the lecturer is reciting a pathetic poem 
or is endeavoring to produce his best effect, and 
then, starting from the point farthest from the 
door, drags his slow length along. Like the old 
woman at Banbury Cross, he makes music wher- 
ever he goes, for there is music in his soles. 
Creak, creak, creak, until every head is turned 
and every eye watches the progress of those boots 
with extraordinary interest and attention. There 
is " nothing like leather " in the lecture-room ; and 
if any profound student in hides and human na- 
ture will tell me why country boots totally eclipse 
city boots in noise, and why sane men and women, 
almost without exception and under every circum- 
stance of church, theatre, and lyceum, ivill turn 
round to watch the progress of get-up-and-go-out- 



54 A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

ers, he will confer a lasting favor. Concentration 
of mind is the rarest of all acquirements. Good 
talkers are far more numerous than good listeners, 
and I pity the angel Gabriel if he expects to ob- 
tain undivided attention on the Day of Judgment. 
The only possibility of preserving order will be by 
confiscating all the boots before looking after any 
of the souls. 

Once, if not oftener, in a lecturer's career, he 
will undergo the humiliation of seeing a trium- 
phant rival in a newspaper. I shall never for- 
get a young woman in a yellow bonnet and green 
shawl, who one evening sat before me reading 
the '' New York Ledger." I do not believe she 
heard one w^ord I said. She did not once raise 
her eyes ; she never moved, except to turn a page, 
and I was so much more interested in her than 
she was in me, as on several occasions to almost 
forget myself in my intense desire to know the 
title of the absorbing story. As it was very long, 
and was adorned with very black and white wood- 
cuts, I fancy it must have been written by Syl- 
vanus Cobb, Jr. Gabriel will have a difficult sub- 
ject in this young wonian, if the " Ledger " be 
continued in another world. 



GOING UP THE OHIO. 



T is quite possible to travel on an Ohio 



steamboat and not come to an untimely 
end. I have tried it and still live ; but 
the tortures endured that first expeiimental night 
"lambs cannot forgive, nor worms forget." 




and 



" All boats has their day on the Mississip," 

With " Jim Bludso" in my pocket, 

I expected while in bed 
To go up like any rocket, 

And come down as good as dead. 

It was a black night, and the red-hot cinders as 
they shot past the window looked like the fiery 
eyes of devouring monsters. "Capital things to 
set fire to a boat," I thought. " Nice inflammable 
material down below, too, that I saw going aboard. 
A few cinders properly disposed are all that is ne- 
cessary to make ghosts of us 

' Afore the smokestacks fall.' " 



56 A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

What a creature a high-pressure engine is ! It 
snorts and puffs and blows like a whale with 
the asthma ! It shivers its timbers like an ele- 
phant with the ague ! It careens and cracks as 
though an earthquake were at hand. It has 
greater capacity for doing more uncomfortable 
things than any inanimate creature that ever 
breathed. 'Whenever an exposition of sleep came 
upon me, we made a landing, and then the thun- 
ders of heaven were as nothing to the rumbling 
and grumbling of discharging freight. Whenever 
I thought of becoming reconciled to the situation, 
a terrific yell, unequalled by the most fiendish 
war-whoop, signalled the approach of a " down " 
steamer, and the possibilities of a lively collision 
were added to other pleasures of the imagination. 
Nothing happened, however, and the surprise at 
being alive the next morning, with such favorable 
opportunities for an impromptu and inexpensive 
funeral, gave me a confidence in Western steam- 
boats from which I shall never recover. 

Daylight brought with it a novel phase of life, for 
he who has never passed a day in a Western pilot- 
house knows nothing of one of the most interest- 
ing modes of travelling. It may snow and blow, 
but there, in your tight little glass house high in 
the air, you can put your feet on a red-hot stove. 



GOING UP THE OHIO. 57 

and bid defiance to the elements, while vour eye 
embraces the landscape far and near. And a 
beautiful landscape it often is on the sinuous 
Ohio, well christened years ago " la belle riviere." 
But why called " Ohio " ? Nobody seems to know, 
although there are two popular answers to this 
question ; the first being that when three Indians 
(three people, generally three brothers, always dis- 
cover everything) first beheld this river, one ex- 
claimed, "01" the second " Hi ! " and the third 
" ! " which rapturous exclamations become, by a 
short sum in addition, Ohio ! The second answer, 
drawing less upon the credulity, maintains that 
0, hi, 0, were the syllables sung by the Indians in 
keeping time with their oars as they rowed up and 
dow^n the river. Whatever its origin, the word is 
as rich and round in sound as the great State is in 
fact. 

Sight is not the only faculty gratified in this 
glass house where one may throw stones to the top 
of one's bent without fear of the retort courteous. 
The pilot-house is the steamboat exchange where 
the favored few seek refuge when they would 
escape from the cabin's terrible silence and all-per- 
vading melancholy. There, when off duty, the 
captain ■" loafs and invites his soul," there the pilot 
may be interviewed, there all the stories are told, 
3* 



58 A LECTUEER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

and there all the laughmg is done. I have rarely 
felt more at home than in that Ohio pilot-house, 
for every man present was a thoroughly natural, 
manly character, with the instincts of a gentleman. 
The captain's clothes had not been cut by a fashion- 
able tailor, but, strange as it may seem, this did 
not render him the less chivalrous. There was 
something absolutely touching in the gentleness 
and courtesy of that great, strong, externally 
rough, internally big-hearted man. And the esti- 
mate he had of women m.ade me feel that I for 
one ought to go to work to deserve it. '^ Why, 
there 's no doubt about it, women are a great deal 
better than men. I think they 're superior to us 
all round. I don't take to woman suffrage, be- 
cause it seems to me that women have more to do 
now than they can attend to. They are worked 
to death. I don't think the Lord ever intended 
they should have so much put upon them ; men 
are stronger, and ought to take care of them." 

" That 's all right enough," replied a male pas- 
senger, "but what has work got to do with suffrage 1 
Tell me that. It is n't going to increase women's 
cares. It 's going to make them think more, but 
thinking does n't hurt people ; it 's good for them. 
Women are not obliged to hold office if they don't 
want to. And how much time does voting re- 



GOING UP THE OHIO. 59 

quire 1 Not half as much as making a call and 
serving up a dish of gossip. I tell you what it is, 
this woman's suffrage has got to come, and it 's 
going to give w^omen the same rights ive have, and 
it is n't going to make them less women either. 
That 's what you 're all afraid of." 

" Well," said the captain, " I can't quite see it; 
but if women want to vote, I '11 never oppose them. 
They generally want to do what 's about the thing, 
and I don't think men have any right to tell 
them what they shall and what they sha' n't do." 

" That 's it," answered the passenger. " Try the 
thing on yourself, and see how you like it." 

" I believe in letting women have their own 
waj^" said the pilot, who until then had preserved 
an unbroken silence. "Guess they can't make 
matters worse than they are," 

*' That 's so," echoed a voice ; and for an hour 
the pros and co)is of woman suffrage were dis- 
cussed in a spirit that might be imitated by 
Beacon Street and Fifth Avenue with great profit. 
Every man kept his temper. Nobody called any- 
body " unwomanly," or " scoundrel," or " fool," 
or " shrieking sisterhood," which last is the most 
recent pet name of derision ; and the final verdict 
rendered was " to do the right thing by woman, 
and make her man's equal before the law." 



60 A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

Naturally enough the conversation turned upon 
the " New York Tribune," the one subject about 
■which every human being in the United States has 
an opinion. Then spake a wonderfully preserved 
old man, who looked young enough to be Mr. 
Greelev's son. 

" Why, I 'm as old as Horace Greeley, and I re- 
member when he started the ' New-Yorker.' I 
was a New-Yorker myself at that time. Good 
gracious, how that city has changed ! I remember 
I owned a large lot on the corner of Broadway and 
Canal Street. Bless you, I sold it one day at what 
I considered a bargain ! If I 'd only held on, I 'd 
have been worth a sight of money. And Horace, — 
well, he 's fought it out on one line all these years, 
and I must say he 's done first-rate on the whole. 
He 's got the queerest lot of kinks in his head of 
any sensible man I ever knew, but, after all, he 's 
on the right side. He 's honest, and that 's more 
than you can say for the rest of 'em. I get as mad 
— why, I get as mad as — well, no matter what — 
with the " Tribune " sometimes, and I tell my wife 
I '11 stop it, but she brings me to my senses by 
asking me how I 'm to better myself. So I hang on, 
and, take it all round, get my money's worth. But 
we were talking about lecturing," he continued. 
" Well, now, there 's Western Virginia ; why don't 



GOING UP THE OHIO. 61 

yon make us a visit, and tell the people of the 
United States what a great country it is, and what 
undeveloped resources it has % There is n't a man 
in Washington knows anything about it. Every- 
body goes tearing off to California, and here 's 
something under their very noses they won't look 
at. Wh}^ even Horace Greeley pretends to visit 
Virginia, but he hangs round Norfolk, and goes 
home as ignorant of the western part of the old 
State as when he went. We never took to slav- 
ery. We were always on the other side of the 
fence, and none of you writers come near us. All 
we require is to be written up. Why don't the 
Yankee girls come down and give us a few lessons 
in matters and things % I know we 're all pretty 
rough, but I tell you we 've got 'grit,' and every 
one of those girls would find a first-rate husband. 
Instead of which they stay there in Massachusetts 
and live and die old maids. I tell you it is n't right. 
They ought to leave home. The country needs 
them, and if they knew what 's good for them as 
well as I do, they would. There 's no more reason 
why women should stick in one place than men. 
I believe in work for everybody. These dolls of 
girls that do nothing, what do they amount to % 
They ain't worth their feed. They 're just about 
as much use in the world as poodles, and I 'd 



62 . A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

enough sight rather board a poodle, for he costs 
less. I tell you society is all wrong, and we 've 
got to have a revolution if we want republican 
institutions to last. We 've got rid of slavery, 
and now we must get rid of all these confounded 
notions about what makes ladies and gentlemen. 
I want to see full-length men and. women, / do." 

By all means let us have them, instead of these 
quarter-views. 

"How do these people communicate with the 
world "? " I asked, pointing to isolated shanties on 
the banks of the river. " Where do they go for 
letters and papers 1 " 

" They don't communicate. They never go any- 
where for letters and papers. Most of 'em can't 
read," answered the pilot. 

" Whom do they vote for % " 

'* General Jackson ! " 

" Well, you may laugh, but it 's true," said a 
gentleman. " I happened into one of these shan- 
ties shortly after the war, and the man asked me 
my name. ' Grant,' I replied." 

" Seems to me I 've heard that name before. 
He fit in the war, did n't he ] " 

" Yes." 

" I thought so, hut I don't remember which side 
he Jit o/i." 



GOING UP THE OHIO. 63 

And this is enlightened, newspaper-reading, pa- 
triotic America ! 

Conversation flagging, I took " Jim Bludso " 
from my pocket, and, handing it to my friend the 
captain, asked him what he thought of it. The 
captain, who had been poking the fire, sat down 
and read the poem through once, twice, thrice. 
" Well," said he at last, " I ain't no great hand at 
poetry, but this is sort of in my line. He 's got 
some terms a little out of the perpendicular, and 
he 's got engineer and pilot a little mixed ; other- 
wise he 's hit it pretty well. About the truest 
thing he says is 

' One wife in Natchez-under-the-Hill, 
And another one here in Pike.' 

Here, Jim, you read it." And the captain stood at 
the wheel while "Jim " read the poem with an in- 
terested expression of face. " Yes, he 's played 
Hail Columbia with a few things, but it ain't 
bad." 

" Let me study that poetry. Let me keep it 
till I stop for you going down day after to-morrow, 
and then I '11 tell you just what I think about it," 
said the captain, carefully folding up " Jim Blud- 
so " and putting it in his vest-pocket. 
• Alas ! " day after to-morrow " never came. The 



64 



A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 



captain was detained up the river by freight, tele- 
graphed his regrets, I was obhged to descend to 
the ignominy of car travelUDg, and Colonel Hay 
will never know the final judgment upon "Jim 
Bludso." 




RUMINATING ANIMALS. 



" In the fourth century a powerful but perverse sectary im- 
bibed the idea that the air was filled with unholy legions, and 
that it inhaled devils at every breath. Brooding over this 
fantasy, it gradually became to him the most important and 
reasonable of truths, and he started a new heresy, — that of the 
Messalians, — which made spitting a religious exercise, in the 
hope of casting out the devils thus breathed in. In traA^elling 
in our steamboats and railroad cars, one sometimes suspects 
that this belief has numerous American disciples, as it is the 
only religion whose rites are there scrupulously observed, and 
as the constant invocation of its worshippers appears to be, 
' Expectoration, heavenly maid, descend ! ' " 

E. P. Whipple. 

T must be so, otherwise what does it 
mean 1 Or is it with men as with horned 
cattle that always keep a cud in their 
mouths'? "If the creature happens to lose its 
cud," says Dr. Holmes on the authority of his 
bucohc friends, "it must have an artificial one 
given it, or it will pine, and perhaps die." Is the 
quid as necessary to man as the cud to horned 
cattle ] Can he discover no qiiid pro quo for his 

E 



l^-y^l^ 


^^m 



66 A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

present disgusting habit 1 How much more of a 
beast is he in his quid-ddtiQS than horned cattle 
in their cud-ditiQ^ ! Who ever saw four-legged 
animals expectorate] They ruminate without 
detriment to the green carpet beneath their feet, 
while two-legged man carries ruin in his trail. 
Better a slimy hippopotamus or a A^entilated 
kerosene tank for a travelling neighbor than a 
great American spitter ! 

In steamboats you can escape the rain of ter- 
ror. Ruminating animals have a cabin to them- 
selves, where, planting their feet on the stove, they 
can in mute conclave "spit round sociable." But 
the hair-breadth 'scapes by flood in cars are of a 
nature to try the patience of Job himself. Like 
the coui'se of empire, 

Westward Expectoration takes its way, 

and the farther you leave the Atlantic Ocean 
behind you, the nearer you are to an ocean of 
another color, that is by no means favorable to 
navigation. To champion chewers the floor of a 
car is one vast spittoon, and he is the best fellow 
who covers the greatest amount of surface. What 
their aim will be it is impossible to calculate, for 
they fire as wildly as did our friend Winkle when 
he aimed at rooks and brought down Tupman's 



RUMINATING ANIMALS. 67 

arm. There are chewers who do " a neat thine: " 
in expectoration, hitting a stove at ten paces, but 
they are rare. The common variety pursue an 
irregular method of warfare, and are as indifferent 
to pubUc opinion as though pubhc opinion did not 
exist. They do not seem to know that they are 
not models of deportment. "Sometimes I feel 
just like pitching those tobacco-chewing fellows 
out of the window," said a conductor of a 
"through" sleeping-car, not long ago. "We go 
to an awful sight of expense getting up these cars, 
and just to head off these fellows we put a big 
spittoon in every section, but it don't do one par- 
ticle of good. Whenever they can choose between 
a new velvet carpet and a spittoon, darned if they 
don't make for the carpet ! I was tickled enough 
the other day. One of those chewers was at it, and, 
getting tired of his own side of the car, he took to 
firing in the aisle, and the lady in the opposite 
seat began to gather up her skirts. Finally he 
got so near that she could n't stand it any longer. 

" ' Mister,' said she, ' where do you live when 
you are at home ? ' 

'' ' With my wife.' 

" ' Do you keep house '? ' 

"'Yes.' 

" ' What sort of a house is it ] ' 



68 A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

" ' Very nice house.' 

" ' Do you spit about it as you are spitting 
about this car % ' 

" ' Yes, madam ; I do as I please in my own 
house.' 

" ' Then, sir, I advise 3^ou to stay at home, for 
people who don't please to be decent ought never 
to be permitted to travel.' 

" Well, I never saw a fellow so taken down. At 
first he did n't see what was coming, but that last 
hit was an eye-opener. He looked mad, but did n't 
dare to say anything, and after that he fired out 
of the window." 

I am persuaded that women are to blame for 
the continuance of a vile habit peculiar to this 
country, for if they protested against it the remedy 
might be found. Many men who chew are as 
good and generous and gentlemanly (at heart) as 
the best in the land ; and if the girls whom they 
love did their duty, American society would be a 
much pleasanter spectacle than it is at present. 
y^/^A woman "weakly and amiably in the right is no 
match for " a man " tenaciously and pugnaciously 
in the wrong." The majority of women are mere 
figure-heads, for the reason that they possess 
neither sufiicient character nor courage to protest 
against anything. They are neuter verbs, and 



RUMINATING ANIMALS. 69 

whatever is, is to he. If women are better than 
men, it is time they gave some evidence of it by 
improving the tone of society. I shall never for- 
get a recent scene in a hotel parlor, of which 1 was 
a curious and astounded spectator. Two very 
young men w^ere "keeping company" with two 
young girls. The two couples occupied two sofas 
in two corners of the room, a huge stove acting as 
a species of barricade between them. One young 
man wore his hat, and sat with his feet elevated at 
an obtuse angle. He held his sweetheart's hand, 
and she smiled upon him blandly. The other 
young man lay upon the other sofa diversifying 
the entertainment by uninterrupted expectoration, 
selecting the stove for a target. Being energeti- 
cally devoted to this romantic action, the latter was 
not equal to any outward demonstration of affec- 
tion, so he put both of his hands in his pockets. 
Inamorata Number Two seemed to be perfectly 
satisfied ; at least she looked so. My first glimpse 
of these charming groups was at two o'clock in the 
afternoon. Upon returning at four o'clock, their 
positions were the same. At seven in the even- 
ing, the bulletin of observation announced " no 
change." For aught I know, these lovers may 
have become rooted to the spot. Now a few 
words of kindlv remonstrance to Lover Number 



70 A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

One would have put his hat and boots where thoy 
belonged. The case of Lover Number Two re- 
quired more heroic treatment, for women have but 
one more powerful and defiant rival than tobacco, 
and that is alcohol ; nevertheless, 1 have known 
men to renounce tobacco quids for the women 
they loved, and the man who will not sacrifice a 
vice to gain affection is not worth having. Both 
young fellows looked thoroughly good-natured, 
and might have been made better had their 
sweethearts realized the situation ; but when 
women are as callous as men, where is the hope 
of improvement 1 If such swains marry, their 
children will be as uncouth as themselves. What 
a pity it is that public schools do not teach 
manners as well as reading, writing, and arith- 
metic ! 

Fancy a man talking sentiment with two yellow 
rivulets flowing from the corners of his mouth ! 
But what is the use of expostulating 1 As a great 
English writer once said privately, " People nowa- 
days can be tickled into anything, frightened into 
most things, beaten into all but common-sense, 
kicked anywhere but into heaven, — but talked 
into nothing ! " So long as " Neptune chewing to- 
bacco" (how significant the name !) is advertised, 
the ocean of Expectoration will flow on. 



A RIVAL ENTERTAINMENT. 




ONCE heard a bright child declare that 
if circuses were prohibited in heaven, 
she did not wish to go there. She had 
been baptized, was under Christian influences, and, 
previous to this heterodoxy, had never given her 
good parents a moment's anxiety. Her naive ut- 
terance touched a responsive chord within my own 
breast, for well did I remember how gloriously the 
circus shone by the light of other days ; how the 
ring-master, in a wrinkled dress-coat, seemed the 
most enviable of mortals, being on speaking terms 
with all the celestial creatures who jumped over 
flags and through balloons ; how the clown was 
the dearest, funniest of men : how the young ath- 
letes in tights and spangles were my heau-ideah of 
masculinity ; and how La Belle Rose, with one foot 
upon her native heath, otherwise a well-padded 
saddle, and the other pointed in the direction of 
the sweet little cherubs that sat up aloft, was the 



72 A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

most fascinating of her sex. I am persuaded that 
circuses fill an aching void in the universe. What 
children did before their invention I shudder to 
think, for circuses are to childhood what butter is 
to bread; and what the world did before the birth 
of Barnum is an almost equally frightful problem. 
fSome are born to shows, others attain shows, and 
yet again others have shows thrust upon them. 
Barnum is a born showman. If ever a man ful- 
filled his destiny, it is the discoverer of Tom 
Thumb. With the majority of men and women 
life is a failure. Not until one leg dangles in the 
gTave is their rccison d'etre disclosed. The round 
people always find themselves sticking in the 
square holes, and vice versa; but with Barnum we 
need not deplore a vie manquee. We can smile at 
his reverses, for even the phoenix has cause to 
blush in his presence. Though pursued by tongues 
of fire, Barnum remains invincible when iron, 
stone, and mortar crumble around him ; and while 
yet the smoke is telling volumes of destruction, 
the cheery voice of the showman exclaims, "Here 
you are, gentlemen ; admission fifty cents, children 
half price." 

Aproj)os of Barnum, once in my life I gave my- 
self up to unmitigated joy. Weary of lecturing, 
singing the song " I would I were a boy again," I 



A RIVAL ENTERTAINMENT. 73 

went to see the elephant. To speak truly, I saw 
not one elephant, but half a dozen. I had a feast 
of roaring and a flow of circns. In fact I indulged 
in the wildest dissipation. I visited Barnum's cir- 
cus and sucked peppermint candy in a way most 
childlike and bland. The reason seems obscure, 
but circuses and peppermint candy are as insepa- 
rable as peanuts and the Bowery. Appreciating 
this solemn fact, Barnum provides bigger sticks 
adorned with bigger red stripes than ever Romans 
sucked in the palmy days of the Coliseum. In the 
dim distance I mistook them for barbers' poles, 
but upon direct application I recognized them for 
my long lost own. 

However, let me, like the Germans, begin with 
the creation. '' Here, ladies and gentlemen, is for 
sale Mr. Barnum's Autobiography, full of interest 
and anecdote, one of the most charming produc- 
tions ever issued from the press, 900 pages, 32 full- 
page engravings, reduced from $ 3.50 to $ 1.50, 
Every purchaser enters free." 

How ordinary mortals can resist buying Bar- 
num's Autobiography for one dollar — such a bar- 
gain as never was — is incomprehensible. I believe 
they cannot. I believe they do their duty lilve 
men. As one man I resisted, because I'belong to 
the press, and therefore am not mortal. Who ever 

4 



74 A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

heard of a journalist getting a bargain 1 With 
Spartan firmness I turned a deaf ear to the per- 
suasive music of the propagandist, and entered 
where hope is all before. I was not staggered by 
a welcome from all the Presidents of the United 
States, Fitz-Greene Halleck, General Hooker, and 
Gratz Brown. These personages are rather wood- 
eny and red about the face, as though flushed 
with victories of the platform or the table, but I 
recognized their fitness in a menagerie. What 
athlete has turned more somersaults than some of 
these representative men 1 What lion has roared 
more gently than a few of these sucking doves 1 
Barnum's tact in appropriately grouping curiosi- 
ties, living and dead, is too well known to require 
comment. Passing what Sam Weller would call 
" a reg'lar knock-down of intellect," I took my seat 
high in the air amid a dense throng of my fellow- 
creatures, and realized how many people it takes 
to make up the world. What did I see '? I saw 
double. I beheld not one' ring but two, in each 
of which the uncommon variety of man was dis- 
porting in an entertaining manner. I felt for 
these uncommon men. Think what immortal 
hates must arise from these dual performances ! 
We all like to receive the reward of merit, but 
when two performances are going on simulta- 



A RIVAL ENTERTAINMENT. 75 

iieously, how are the artists to know for whom it 
is intended % Applause is the sweet compensation 
for which all strive privately or publicly, and to 
be cheated out of it, or left in doubt as to its 
destination, is a refined form of the Inquisition. 
Fancy the sensations of the man balancing plates 
on the little end of nothing, — a feat to which he 
has consecrated his life, — at thought of his neigh- 
bor's performance of impossible feats in the air ! 
It would be more than human in both not to wish 
the other in Jericho, or in some equally remote 
quarter of the globe. I sympathized with them. 
I became bewildered in my endeavors to keep one 
eye on each. If human beings were constructed 
on the same principles as Janus, and had two 
faces, a fore-and-aft circus would be convenient ; 
but as nowadays double-faced people only wear . 
two eyes in their heads, the Barnumian conc^- 
tion muddles the intellect. I pray jo\x, great and 
glorious showman, take pity on your artists and 
your audiences. Don't drive the former mad and 
the latter distracted. Remember that insanity is 
on the increase, and that accommodations in asy- 
lums are limited. Take warning before you under- 
mine the reason of an entire continent. Beware ! 
Beware ! 

I hear much and see more of the physical weak- 



76 A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

ness of woman. Michelet tells the sentimental 
world that woman is an exquisite invalid^ with a 
perennial headache and nerves perpetually on the 
.rack. It is a mistake. When I gaze upon Ger- 
man and French peasant-women, I ask Michelet 
which is right, he or Nature % And since my in- 
troduction to Barnum's female gymnast, — a good- 
looking, well-formed mother of a family, who 
walks about unflinchingly with men and boys on 
her shoulders, and carries a 300-pound gun as 
easily as the ordinary woman carries a clothes- 
basket, — I have been persuaded that " the com- 
ing woman," like Brother Jonathan, will " lick all 
creation." In that good time, woman will have 
her rights because she will have her muscle. 
Then, if there are murders and playful beatings 
between husbands and wives, the wives will enjoy 
all the glory of crime. What an outlook ! And 
what a sublime consolation to the present en- 
feebled race of wives that are having their throats 
cut and their eyes carved out merely because 
their biceps have not gone into training ! Bar- 
num's female gymnast is an example to her sex. 
What woman has done woman may do again. 
Mothers, train up your daughters in the way they 
should fight, and when they are married they will 
not depart this life. God is on the side of the 



A RIVAL ENTERTAINMENT. 77 

stoutest muscle as well as of the heaviest battal- 
ions. It is perfectly useless to talk about the 
equality of the sexes as long as a man can 
strangle his own mother-in-law. 

I was exceedingly thrilled by the appearance of 
the two young gentlemen from the Cannibal 
Islands, who are beautifully embossed in green 
and red, and compassionated them for the sacrifices 
they make in putting on blankets and civilization. 
Is it right to deprive them of their daily bread, — 
I mean their daily baby % Think what self-restraint 
they must exercise while gazing upon the toothsome 
infants that congregate at the circus ! That they 
do gaze and smack their overhanging lips I know, 
because, after going through their cannibalistic 
dance, they sat behind me and howled in a sub- 
dued manner. The North American Indian who 
occupied an adjoining seat, favored me with a 
translation of their charming conversation, by 
which I learned many important facts concerning 
man as an article of diet. It appears that babies, 
after all, do not make the daintiest morsels. Ten- 
der they are, of course, but, being immature, they 
have not the rich flavor of a youthful adult. 
This seems reasonable. Veal is tender, but 
can it be favorably compared with beefl The 
cases are parallel. The embossed young men con- 



78 A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

sider babies excellent for entrees, but for roasts 
there is nothing like plump maidens in their 
teens. Men of twenty are not bad eating. When 
older, they are invariably boiled. Commenting 
upon the audience, the critics did not consider it 
appetizing; and, strange as it may appear, I felt 
somewhat hurt by the remark, for who is not vain 
enough to wish to look good enough to eat % Fancy 
being shipwrecked off the Fiji Islands, and dis- 
carded by cannibals as a tough subject, while your 
companions are literally killed with attention ! 
Can you not imagine, that, under such circum- 
stances, a peculiar jealousy of the superior ten- 
derness of your friends would be a thorn in the 
flesh, rendering existence a temporary burden % If 
we lived among people who adored squinting, 
should we not all take to it, and cherish it as the 
apple of our eye ? And if we fell among anthro- 
pophagi, would not our love of approbation make 
us long to be as succulent as young pigs % What 
glory to escape from the jaws of death, if the 
jaws repudiate us % So long as memory holds a 
seat in this distracted brain, I shall entertain un- 
pleasant feelings toward the embossed young gen- 
tlemen who did not sigh to fasten their affections 
— otherwise their teeth — on me. It was worse 
than a crime : it was bad taste. 



A RIVAL ENTERTAINMENT. 79 

Roaming among the wild animals, I made the 
acquaintance of the cassowary, in which I have 
been deeply interested since childhood's sunny 
hours, for then 't was oft I sang a touching hymn 
running thus : — 

" If I were a cassowary 
Far away in Timbuctoo, 
I should eat a missionary, 
Hat, and boots, and hymn-book too." 

From that hour the cassowary occupied a large 
niche in my heart. The desire to gaze upon a 
bird capable of digesting food to which even the 
ostrich never aspired, pursued me by day and 
tinctured my dreams by night. " What you seek 
for all your life you will come upon suddenly when 
the whole family is at dinner," says Thoreau. I 
met the cassowary at dinner. He was dining alone, 
having left his family in Africa, and I must say 
that I never met with a greater disappointment. 
Were it not for the touching intimation of the 
hymn, I should believe it impossible for him to 
eat a missionary. A quieter, more amiable bird 
never stood on two legs. A polite attendant 
stirred him up for me, yet his temper and his 
feathers remained unruffled. Perhaps if our geo- 
graphical position had changed to Timbuctoo, and 
I had been a missionary with hymn-book in hand, 



80 A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

the cassowary might have reahzed my expecta- 
tions. As it was, one more illusion vanished. 

In order to regain my spirits, I shook hands 
with the handsome giant in brass buttons ; and 
speaking of giants leads me to the subject of all 
lusus naturce, particularly the Circassian young- 
lady, the dwarf, the living skeleton, the Albinos, 
and What-is-it. I have dropped more than one 
tear at the fate of these unfortunate beings; for 
what is more horribly solitary than to live in a 
strange crowd, with 

"No one to love, 
None to caress" '? 

Noah was human. When he retired to the ark, 
he selected two of a kind from all the animal 
kingdom for the sake of sociabilit}'- as well as for 
more practical purposes. Showmen should be 
equally considerate. To think of those Albino 
sisters with never an Albino beau, of the Cir- 
cassian beauty with never a Circassian sweet- 
heart, of the living skeleton with never an- 
other skeleton in his closet (how he can look 
so good-natured would be most mysterious, were 
not his digestion pronounced perfect), to think 
of the wretched What-is-it with never a Mrs. 
What-is-it, produces unspeakable anguish. May 
they meet their affinities in another and a more 



A RIVAL ENTERTAINMENT. 



81 



sympathetic world, where monstrosities are impos- 
sible for the reason that we leave our bones on 
earth. Since gazing at the What-is-it, I have be- 
come a convert to Darwin. It is too true. Our 
ancestors stood on their hind legs, and the less we 
talk about pedigree the better. The noble demo- 
crat in search of a coat-of-arms and a grandfather 
should visit a grand moral circus. Let us assume 
a virtue, though we have it not ; let our pride cqje 
humility. 

Were I asked which I thought the greater ne- 
cessity of civilization, lectures or circuses, I should 
lay my right hand upon my left heart, and exclaim, 
" Circuses ! " 




4* 



A LECTURE ON MASKS. 




" Foolery, Sir, does walk about the orb, like the sun ; it 
shines everywhere. " 

HOUGH Mrs. General shake her proper 
head, though she insist upon a steady 
diet of "potatoes, prunes, and prism,'' 
the fact cannot be denied that masked balls fill 
a vacuum abhorred by human nature, — referring, 
of course, to human nature in a state of ex- 
treme culture. The aborigines required no such 
expansion, for the very good reason that they 
followed the bent of their inclinations on all oc- 
casions. They were never held in check by a 
rigorous public opinion. Mrs. Grundy, Monsieiir 
On Bit, Chroniq^ies Scandaleuses, came into power 
when feathers and vermilion went out. A mas- 
querade would have been a pale and sickly amuse- 
ment after the whoops and gymnastics of a war- 
dance, nor would the modern method of taking 
scalps have been favorably entertained by the 



A LECTURE ON MASKS. 83 

unrefi-enerate child of the forest. The native 
American's hfe Avas what the Itahans call one per- 
petual sfogo (burst), but we poor victims of con- 
ventionalit}^, who walk Broadway with measured 
tread ; who, attired in the latest panier, wear 
society's smirk and utter platitudes in a subdued 
tone of voice ; who stand up in crowds and allow 
fellow-sufferers to walk up the back breadth of the 
only part of us that systematically goes on a train; 
who attempt to dance within the circumference 
of a soup-plate, or who remain at home and, in the 
sublime character of Christian martyrs, do our 
allotted W'Ork until brain and body cry aloud for 
relaxation ; — to us miserable victims of a glorious 
civilization, I claim that masked balls are a healthy 
tonic. 

The impossibility of making public masquerades 
reputable only holds good where, as in Paris, no 
attempt at respectability is dreamed of. Pande- 
monium let loose would be a quiet, proper tea- 
party compared with these maddest of orgies. 
Absence of character is the surest passport, but 
the absence of a dress-coat leaves all hope behind. 
Morals are of no consequence, but a paternal gov- 
ernment insists upon an irreproachable toilet. 
"The soul of this man is in his clothes.'' 

Spirit of Thackeray, do not your shadowy fingers 
long to tear one more mockery to tatters 1 



84 A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

Perhaps 3^011 are shocked at what may be called 
a plea for Old World follies. Softly. There be 
folly and there be vice ; mark the difference and 
make the distinction. Folly may lead to vice as 
one glass of wine may lead to delirium tremens, 
but neither is inevitable. Riding may doom one 
to a broken neck, and swimming to a watery grave ; 
but because of possible evil, shall there be no more 
cakes and ale % If some souls find vice in what to 
others is nothing worse than healthy pleasure, let 
them prescribe total abstinence for — themselves. 
The good, old-fashioned clergyman assures his 
flock that the play-house is the centre of Satan's 
kingdom, and no doubt the reverend gentleman 
is right, so far as he is individually concerned ; 
but does it follow that every one who frequents 
theatres is on the road to perdition % Does not 
the world clamor for theatres % As they cannot be 
exterminated, would it not be wiser to devote one's 
eloquence to their much-needed reform % 

If you are honest, you will confess, sotto voce, that 
a streak of outlawry runs through humanity, which, 
if it cannot find harmless outlets, will seek those 
known by another name. The bow cannot always 
be strung ; there must be a reverse to every medal. 
If there be sense, must there not be nonsense *? Is 
not creation made up of contrasts % He who does 



A LECTURE ON MASKS. 85 

not unbend suffers mentally, morally, and phys- 
ically. " It takes a wise man to be a fool," says 
the old saw, and the old saw is a concentration of 
centuries of philosophy. 

According a certain amount of folly to the human 
constitution, the demand for food becomes a fore- 
gone conclusion. Americans do not know how to 
enjoy themselves. Business and dissipation are 
equally well understood, but recreations that need 
not lead to unfortunate results are not compre- ^ 
hended. Unnatural excitement in business beo-ets 

o 

unnatural excitement in pleasure, and when men 
seek relaxation — I refer to the majority — they 
conceive the glory of getting gloriously drunk. 
Morals and family laid aside, nothing is more 
aesthetically offensive than this national pastime, 
and by our own showing, we (including the Eng- 
lish) are the most vulgar, the most dissipated, and, 
at the same time, the most serious, people in the 
civilized world. Our folly is all vice ; our idea of 
fun is as doleful as the Dance of Death. Women, 
being neither gamblers nor drunkards, indulge in 
weaknesses ; having no distraction but servants, 
they subside into invalids. Thanks, then, to Jew, 
Gentile, or German, who grafts carnival fruit on 
our tree of liberty. 

There was a vast deal of wisdom in the old Ro- 



86 A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

man institution of the Saturnalia. It allowed the 
existence of animal spirits and acknowledged their 
right to expression. Fetters might be worn all the 
year round, provided liberty became license he first 
seven days in January. Slaves had privileges which 
masters w^ere bound to respect. Patrician, ple- 
beian, and bondmen met upon the common ground 
of foolery, and, losing all thought of dignity or sor- 
row, remembered only to be merry. Though the 
manacles of that era have melted in the fire of 
justice, a great social tyrant still rules with an 
iron hand, and there is as much need of a Satur- 
nalia now as then. Appreciating this fact, Italy 
clings to a modified form of the ancient custom, 
and no foreigners do more to keep alive the absurd- 
ities of its Carnival season than the Americans. 
This proves that, given a favorable opportunity, 
we are quite capable of making fools of ourselves. 
Anything more utterly senseless than the Carnival 
Corso at Rome is inconceivable. To pelt people 
wdth flour and confetti; to hurl flowers at the 
heads of passers-by ; to converse with any mask 
off'ering the right hand of fellowship ; to drive up 
and down, on the last night of the Carnival, with 
a lighted taper in one hand and a wet towel in the 
other, striving to put out every approaching taper 
while endeavoring to rescue your own from a simi- 



A LECTURE ON MASKS. 87 

lar fate, accompanying the effort with screams of 
" Senza moccolo " ; to go home at midnight singing 
Rossini's Buona Sera, — are freaks purely idiotic 
in themselves, yet thoroughly in harmony with 
a phase of human nature that rarely receives just 
treatment. The Italians are able to enjoy this 
extreme of liberty because their instincts rarely 
permit them to overstep bounds of propriety. 
Drunkenness and vulgarity of language and man- 
ner are sj^ecialties of such nations as lay claim to 
superior virtue. 

What champagne is to supper, masked balls are 
to carnivals. They are the keystone to the arch 
of folly, and the person who has never worn a 
mask in the spirit of a mask has failed to experi- 
ence one of the most novel and most exhilarating 
of sensations. There is not its equivalent in the 
known world. To woman the mask is the first 
taste of paradise. Behind it she is exempted from 
all rules of etiquette, and for the only time in her 
life has an advantage over men. Old and young 
enjoy equal privileges, all may go and come with- 
out the intervention of pantaloons, and for once 
the burden of " waitino- to be asked " is shifted to 
manly shoulders. Woman can actually roam at 
discretion among a wilderness of swallow-tails, 
without recognition and without reproach. Put 



88 A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

on a mask and she may be herself; take it off and 
she must be somebody else. How much more 
honest is the mask ! 

To completely lose one's self-consciousness and 
to pass unknown among unmasked friends and 
foes is as refreshing as to be dropped into a 
foreign country in full possession of a clairvoyant 
knowledge of its inhabitants. It is the nearest 
possible approach to wearing an invisible cap. 
Students of human nature may gaze into eyes 
with impunity, and read a deal of truth that would 
otherwise remain undisclosed. A clever masker 
can discover more real character in a few minutes 
than would be developed in years of casual ac- 
quaintance, and conversation may be sentimental 
or piquant without fear of a construction au pied 
de la lettre. What an intense satisfaction ! Who 
does not at times long to insist that the moon is 
made of green cheese, that the world is filled with 
sawdust, that 

"All friendship is feigning, 
All loving mere folly ; 
Then heigh, ho ! the holly ! 
This life is most jolly," 

and on these themes compose variations as endless 
as any dreamed of by Henri Herz '? Where else 
but at a masked ball can these variations be exe- 



A LECTUni-: ON MASKS. 89 

cuted'? In this country the genius of masked 
balls is not understood. Men and women, when 
addressed by maskers, 'draw themselves up to the 
full height of their dignity, and look unutterable 
don't-approach-me-ism. This is taking masked 
balls in vain. We Americans entertain the idea 
that, intrinsically wrong, they must be solemnly 
attended under protest. There is no Jicste milieu 
of deportment. One sees the extremes of decorum 
and '' loudness," but seldom that half- way-bet ween- 
ity which is the charm of Southern nations. We 
have not yet learned the art of properly misbe- 
having ourselves, an art only acquired by ladies 
and gentlemen. It is strange, too, how the ma- 
jority of Americans lose their natural intelligence 
the moment they enter the magic circles of masks. 
There is a monosyllabic spell upon them, and 
"yes" and "no," followed by a wretched smile, 
coustitute their stock of mother-wit. Any one 
has brains enough to go to a " German," but every 
one cannot attend masked balls with impunity. 
Esprit and grace of manner are indispensable to 
the carrying out of this amusement. Few of us 
are 

" Wi.se enough to play the fool " ; 
For, "to do that Avell, craves a kind of wit " ; 
You "must observe their mood on whom " you "jest, 
The quality of person and the time ; 



90 A LECTURER'S NOTE-BOOK. 

And, like the haggard, check at every feather 
That comes before your eye. This is a practice 
As full of labor as a wise maa's art." 

Who, then, can afford to despise the machinery 
of a mask % Whoever masters its intricacies, who- 
ever wears it with entertainment to himself and 
others, is equal to any emergency in life. Do 3^011 
doubt if? Go to the next masked ball, and if 
some impertinently truthful domino does not 
whisper in your ear that you are an unmitigated 
bore, then you shall receive the honors due only 
to a fool. 




PART II. 

AMEEICAK'S ABROAD. 



AMERICANS ABEOAD. 




AT SEA. 

Atlantic Ocean, Latitude 50, Longitude 12. 
AVET sheet and a flowing sea may be in- 
spiring, but I fail to appreciate either. It 
sounds well to sing about *'alife on the 
ocean wave and a home on the rolling deep," but 
i-ather than lead such a life in such a home, I 'd 
be governess in an English family, which is the 
worst fate falling to the lot of woman. Viewed 
from very dry land, the sea is charming. It adds 
immensely to a landscape, and, in connection 
with it, makes beautiful pictures. In fine weather 
it is fascinating for rowing and yachting, provided 
land be in sight ; but the ocean as ocean is an un- 
mitigated nuisance, and no poet need try to delude 
me into liking it. I don't say this because I am 
a bad sailor, for after two days ad nauseam I go 
about on excellent sea-legs and take my four 



94 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

" square " meals with the appetite of a veteran. I 
say it because the sea insults more than my stom- 
ach. It insults me physically, morally, and men- 
tally. Emerson never touched the truth more 
nearly than when he wrote : "I find the sea-life 
an acquired taste, like that for tomatoes and 

olives Nobody likes to be treated ignomini- 

ously, upset, shoved against the side of the house, 
rolled over, suffocated with bilge, mephitic and 
stewing oil." If anybody does like it, let the 
finger of scorn be pointed at him until he goes 
down to a watery grave. The sickly smell and 
bad air of a steamer are in themselves enough to 
disgust genteel noses and healthy lungs; a gen- 
eral dampness and stickiness offend the touch ; 
the sight of wretchedly ^^ellow women done up 
after the manner of mummies, and of men in flannel 
shirts and unkempt beards, looking like very dirty 
and very bloodthirsty pirates, is not calculated to 
enhance one's belief in the dignity of humanity ; 
protesting stomachs, shivering timbers, groaning 
machinery, whistling wind, breaking china, crying- 
babies, and roaring waves are not music to the 
ear. Four senses out of five are systematically 
outraged, and, in nine cases out of ten, the fifth 
is rendered worse than useless by the upward ten- 
dency of every article of food. 



AT SEA. 95 

There is no such thing as comfort at sea. You are 
first put into a cage called a state-room, the sight of 
which demoralizes mind and body. There is no place 
for anything; and as, if there were, a heavy sea 
would send everything off in a tangent, you conclude 
to abstain from those attentions to the toilet which 
on land are considered indispensable. You lose 
every atom of ambition and energy, and find your- 
self doubting the utility of washing your face and 
combing your hair. How can you, Avhen it requires 
skilful gymnastic efforts to pour out water and ob- 
tain a glimpse of your wretched self in a looking- 
glass 1 Anybody at sea who tries to hold the mir- 
ror up to nature will have enough to do. I wish 
him joy of the undertaking. 

You go to bed in what 1 In a box, out of which 
you are frequently hurled, thus piling a Pelion of 
injury upon an Ossa of insult. If you protest against 
being throw^n out of bed, you are boarded up like 
pigs in a pen, or chickens in a coop ! You hate to 
" turn in," and still more do you hate to " turn 
out." You lie contemplating your shoes and 
stockings with dismay. You wonder whether the 
stewardess will rescue you from the horrors of the 
situation by putting them on for you, while, with 
the most provokingly placid voice, a storm that 
turns everything upside-do w^n and everybody in- 



96 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

side-out, causing you to lead the life of a fly without 
a fly's natural advantage in standing on his head, 
she calls nothing but a stiff breeze ! 

Well, you finally get dressed in a limp and 
frowzy manner. You sit down to breakfast. Your 
butter lands in your lap, and your tea goes down 
your throat via your eyes and neck. There are 
ominous gaps at the table. The interesting wo- 
men are all sick ; men with unbounded stomachs 
drive you to the verge of madness by ordering all 
sorts of horrid, indigestible dishes, which they de- 
vour in gloomy silence, and then pace the deck 
with caps over their eyes, cigars in their mouths, 
and hands in their pockets, as if by so doing the 
chief end of man were accomplished. In the 
early morning the deck is wet with washing, and 
later it is as likely to be wet with fog or rain as 
dry with sunshine. If it he dry, nine times out of 
ten the wind blows so that you seek shelter in 
order to keep your hair on your head, — the hair 
that is yours by divine right. You curl yourself 
up like a dormouse and think you '11 keep a jour- 
nal. Life is so sensational as to warrant a daily 
record, but the wretched steamer makes your hand 
tremble like that of a man with delirium tremens. 
I never got further in my journal than the first 
day, the most lively bit of intelligence being that 



A 2' SEA. 97 

at noon we descried a school of porpoises off the 
port side. Fancy the mental condition of two 
hundred human beings who frantically rush up 
the companion-way to gaze upon a few stupid sea- 
pigs playing in the water ! The standard joke is 
to assure some weak-minded woman that they are 
whales, and then laugh at her credulity. 

Writing being a failure, you decide to read ; and 
here let me remark that Emerson must have been 
undergoing temporary aberration of the mind 
when he declared that "classics which at home 
are drowsily read have a strange charm in a 
country inn, or in the transom of a merchant 
brig." There may be something in the nature 
of a brig to inspire an enthusiasm for Homer 
and Virgil, but the only classics I observe on a 
steamer are "Aurora Floj^d," " Guy Livingstone,'' 
" The Dead Secret," and works of a similarly pro- 
found nature. I have been ten days worrying- 
through a book that on land would have been fin- 
ished in one, and am regarded by the more friv- 
olously inclined passengers as half strong-minded 
and half mad for having attempted it at all. 
Now, if it takes but ten days to so dementalize 
humanity, what would be the consequences if 
all the world went to sea for a yearl Drivel- 
ling idiotcy, I am quite sure. Of course, ex- 
5 G 



98 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

ceptionable people can even rise superior to salt- 
water. There is Anthony Trollope who writes 
novels at sea, and Emerson who reads classics, and 
the consumptive gentleman wlio never was so well 
and never wants to see land, and the officers who 
feel themselves monarchs of all they survey, and 
the wonderful woman who never appears until 
noon, and makes every other woman wretched by 
being dressed in the height of fashion. She paints 
and powders, and wears her veil down at meals ; 
bat is handsome, if you do not object to artifice, 
and is a great favorite with the gentlemen. At 
least, she always manages to be surrounded by 
them, so I suppose they are enthusiastic students 
of art in its highest form. yes, and there are 
the energetic few who edit newspapers. I have 
heard of two newspapers being issued on one 
steamer, and so hating and vilifying one another as 
to be suspended lest murder should ensue ; so you 
see what effect the ocean has upon the temper. 
The reason of English " spleen " is because Bri- 
tannia is entirely surrounded by salt-water. If 
this island were towed to America, and annexed 
to Cape Cod, there would be an immediate trans- 
formation. The next worst fate to living on a ship 
is living on a small island. I once passed three 
weeks on an island three miles long; and half a 



AT SUA. 90 

mile wide, and nearly died of it. Human beings 
do not improve by such close acquaintance. Arc 
3^ou not told that if you wish to find out people 
you must go to sea with them 1 Of course you 
must. I never knew any one made better by con- 
tact with an unnatural element ; yet you are also 
told of the charming society to be met on board 
ships ! It may be ; nothing is impossible ; people 
do meet their affinities at sea, but I never did ; or, 
if I did, they were so diluted in water as for me 
not to know them for my own. No, the sea is a 
necessary evil ; I suppose it is necessary because 
it was created. (Salt, I know, is vital ; but why we 
can't have salt without water is a mystery.) Mos- 
quitoes, fleas, and rattlesnakes are also mysteries. 
The world would be a great deal better and vastly 
more comfortable without them ; but my opinion 
is of no consequence to the universe, or I should 
have been consulted some time ago. I believe the 
Atlantic Ocean was placed between Europe and 
America, made stormy and generally detestable, in 
order to keep the Old World from the New as 
long as possible, and, once crossed, to keep the 
New World from the Old. If it succeeded in 
separating us from European vices and follies it 
would indeed be a blessing, but it does nothing of 
the kind. They are borne on every wind that 



100 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

wafts a vessel to our shores ; and cholera, small- 
pox, yellow fever, and the plague are nourish- 
ed on the oceanic bosom to spread devastation 
throughout our virgin land. Perhaps the ocean is 
intended as discipline. Like other medicine, it is 
to be shaken before taken, and, if it does not agree 
with us, so much the better for our souls. If the 
old saints, who, with heavenly promotion in view, 
enjoyed sitting on pins and needles, walking with 
peas in their shoes, etc., had only known as much 
as we do, going to sea would have been the 
favorite martyrdom. It would have been just the 
element for Saint Catherine of Sienna, as she 
never washed herself. Can you imagine anything 
more horrible than, like a sweet little cherub, to 
sit up aloft and contemplate a storm at sea 1 Saint 
Simeon never dreamed of this, or his pillar would 
have been deserted. The fact is, that at sea you feel 
like a ''dem, damp, moist, unpleasant body," and I 
feel how completely I illustrate Mantalini's graphic 
description. 




A MARTYR TO FREE SPEECH. 




London, December 10, 1871. 
HE first necessity of a great cause is the 
possession of a martyr. Though we are 
assured by the copy-books of our youth 
that truth is mighty and must prevail, there is no 
commodity requiring such liberal advertising to 
bring it into general circulation. Money will 
buy vice, but, since the world began, the price 
paid for truth has been blood. When John 
Brown went forth to the scaffold bravely ex- 
claiming, " I am persuaded that I am worth 
inconceivably more to hang than for any other 
purpose," he foretold the knell of slavery. When 
the government of M. Thiers condemned Rossel to 
be shot, it gave to Communism a hero whose fame 
bids fair to extinguish that of the President him- 
self. 

Republicanism in England is young. Born ob- 
scurely, not knowing who were its parents, the poor 



102 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

thing has languished for want of proper care. 
Adopted recently by Sir Charles Dilke, it has 
gained in strength and stature, only needing a 
baptism in blood to attain a riper development. 
That baptism has come. It is not the martyrdom 
of a John Brown or of a Rossel that I now record ; 
but William Schofield, age fifty-six, is no less a 
martyr to free speech because of his being a la- 
borer. On December 7, William Schofield, of Bol- 
ton, died from injuries received in the Temperance 
Hall, while peaceably listening to Dilke's very sen- 
sible and by no means revolutionary address on 
the distribution of political power. Elsewhere, 
Dilke's arguments in favor of a republic, of a 
truer Parliamentary representation, of reforming, 
or, better, abolishing the House of Lords, have 
been answered by howls, by cheers for a Queen 
whom the young M. P. has never attacked, by 
spasmodic singing, and showers of red pepper. 

Burning to resent the right of independent 
criticism, scorning weak retorts, inflamed by lying- 
placards, p)rimed with drink and armed with stones, 
bricks, bludgeons, hammers, and other weapons, 
the rough-and-ready royalists of Bolton proved 
that Britons were not meant for slaves by a con- 
tinual attack upon the windows and doors of the 
hall in which the Dilke meeting was assembled, 



A MARTYR TO FREE SPEECH. 103 

until one side of the building became a complete 
wreck. Had this high carnival been held in 
America, where, according to the " London Tele- 
graph," "rowdyism is a religion," Europe would 
have been told to gaze upon the license of democ- 
racy ; had the assailants been partisans of Dilke, 
England would have been shown the fearful con- 
sequences of republican doctrines ; but the rioters 
were loyal subjects of the crown, which makes a 
difference. Certain rules do not work both ways ; 
therefore the police did not interfere. Temperance 
Hall was sacked, William Schofield was killed, a 
wife became a widow, and three children were 
made fatherless. Well done, ye good and faithful 
servants ! Enter ye into the United (I) Kingdom 
of Great Britain. 

If Dilke had not had the courage publicly to 
avow what many other Englishmen aclinowledge 
privately, that the best form of government is re- 
publican, William Schofield would now be alive. 
Having made this declaration, supposing England's 
vaunted right of free speech to be far less mythi- 
cal than it turns out, his opponents are determined 
that he shall not be heard on any subject, no mat- 
ter how vital it may be to the people's interests. 
This tyranny reminds me of the good old days be- 
fore the war, when iVbolitionists were pelted with 



104 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

rotten eggs, Garrison was threatened with deatli, 
and the press was muzzled lest it should attack 
the "peculiar institution." But republicans tell 
Eno-land now what Abolitionists told America 
then, that free speech is as inalienable a right as 
free thought, and no amount of bullying, bricks, 
or bludgeons can stifle honest conviction. Men 
who aire brave enough to avow their principles are 
brave enough to endure slander, bricks, and worse, 
for the sake of them. Persecution will only make 
them greater heroes and increase the number of 
their adherents. William Schofield has lost his 
life for daring to sympathize, though never so re- 
motely, with the opinions of Sir Charles Dilkc. 
His is the first blood shed in behalf of the people. 
The Anti-Republican Association, composed of 
"noblemen and gentlemen," banded together for 
the purpose of putting down "democrats, infidels, 
and atheistical spirits," " morally and physically,'' 

— "physically" being italicized in their circular, 

— will do well to remember that English repub- 
licanism has now its martyr. 




THE DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS, AND 
KINGSLEY. 

London, January 3, 1872. 
ODGERS, which is the nearest way to 
the Chapel Royal 1 " Bodgers is the but- 
ler, and a very good butler he is too ; 
knowing his business thoroughly, and not being 
above it. " You surely are not thinking of going 
there to-day, miss." "Yes, I am." "But you 
can't, miss. It 's the chapel for the royal family, 
you see, miss, and for peers and peeresses ; and, 
unless you have a border from the Lord Chamber- 
lain, you won't be admitted. I could have got 
you a border if you 'd only let me know in time." 
" I 'm sorry for that. Charles Kingsley preaches 
to-day, and, as I have read his novels, I am 
anxious to hear him." " Well, if you want to go 
very bad, miss," replies Bodgers, who is nothing 
if not sympathetic, " I think I can get you in. I 
know the verger very well. Him and me used to 



lOG AMERICANS ABROAD. 

be together at the Harchbishop of 's. First 

he was lady's footman, then butler, and then he 
got to be steward ; and when the other verger 
died, the Harchbishop put him in, and a snug 
place it is, miss. Three hundred [pounds] a year 
for life, a house adjoining, and all he has to do is 
to hopen the pews and carry papers to the Lord 
Chamberlain." I assure Bodgers that I wish to go 
"very bad." Of course I do when obstacles pre- 
vent. "Then I think, miss, if I give you a card, 
you won't have any trouble." 

So Bodgers takes one of my cards, writes a few 
lines, signs his name, and I go on my way re- 
joicing, if one can rejoice when there is fog 
above, mud beneath, and a settled and conse- 
quently highly respectable gloom everywhere. I 
rejoice because I am going to the Chapel Royal in 
a thoroughly democratic manner. I am indorsed 
by Bodgers. If I lived one thousand years in a re- 
public, I could not obtain sucb a recommendation. 
It delights me to know that there are ways of 
getting the better of red tape. Down Piccadilly 
I go to St. James Street, down St. James Street to 
St. James Palace, where Charles II. and George 
IV. were born, and where Charles I. took leave of 
his children the day before his execution. It is 
well to remember, in these days, that England did 



DIVJNE RIGHT OF KINGS, AND KJNGSLEY. 107 

behead a king. Through an archwa^^ I pass into 
a court-yard, where I see a knot of men and women 
around a very commonplace door, which a guard 
tells me is the door I seek. I knock ; a benevo- 
lent-looking old man in a long black gown appears, 
reads the card, desires me to step in at the same 
time that he desires everybody else clamoring for 
an entrance to stay out. " You have n't tickets," 
persists the black gown. Neither have I, but am 
I not introduced by a Bodgers and a brother *? 
And to such a verger ! That such a tall, imposing 
person should ever have been a footman ! I know 
he must have been a gorgeous footman ; I know 
by instinct that he owes his promotion to his 
calves. I know they are real. I know that, were 
it not for the long black gown, I should melt into 
an ecstasy worthy of Fanny Squeers, and exclaim, 
" I never saw such legs in the whole course of my 
life ! " 

The verger reads, pockets the card, looks at me, 
and says, " This is one of the most partickerlerest 
days in the whole year ; but if you '11 sit down and 
wait till all the tickets is in, I '11 give you a seat, if 
there is any." I sit down among choir-boys, who, 
in black stockings, red and gilt coats, red knee- 
breeches, and white gowns, are preparing them- 
selves for the services by making dolls and rabbits 



108 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

of their by no means immaculate pocket-handker- 
chiefs, and by chaffing the noble lords and ladies as 
they enter the chapel. One peeress has an absurd 
waddle, and the choir-boys burst into an immoder- 
ate fit of laughter, but they all stand up and bow 
as somebody passes who does not take the least 
notice of them. " Who was that chap ] " asks one 
boy of the other ; and when I hear the name I ask 
myself whether the rising generation possesses 
that reverence for rank about which the papers 
tell us so much. " That young cad 's a peer," 
whispers one of the youths to his neighbor. " I 
say, ain't he a peer "? " The question is addressed 
to the verger, who rubs his hands with intense 
satisfaction. The majority of the women are 
homely and badly dressed ; the men are in no way 
conspicuous; and w^hen Gladstone, a man of the 
people, appears, he brings with him a little of the 
bracing air of intellect. 

The clock strikes twelve ; clergy and choir take 
their seats ; the organ peals forth, and I am ush- 
ered into a vacant pew, adjoining that of the 
Prime Minister. It is so like the opera that I 
gaze at the audience to see whether they have n't 
brought their opera-glasses ; for, look you, although 
I can "see a church by daylight," it is very diffi- 
cult to consider this a chapel. Imagine a long, 



DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS, AND KINGSLEY. 109 

narrow hall, with the entrance at one end, and 
the chancel, with stained-glass window above it, 
at the other ; an aisle down the middle, j ast wide 
enough for two persons to walk abreast ; and two 
rows of pews on each side, raised one above the 
other, looking for all the world like the open boxes 
at the New York Academy of Music. Up stairs, 
opposite the chancel, is the royal box, — I mean 
pew ; and on the sides are several other stage- 
boxes, — I mean pews. The chancel, being adorned 
with a table on which are two great candlesticks, 
several gold dishes on end, with two great tank- 
ards above, resembles the sideboard of an old Ger- 
man baron. To the left of the chancel is the pul- 
pit : and when an officiating clergyman intones 
the service in a mellow barytone, and the choir-boys 
chant " Amen " ; when another officiating clergy- 
man continues the service in a mild tenor, and the 
audience sings " x\men " ; when the barytone exe- 
cutes a florid morceau, — not in the organ-loft, re- 
member, but on the floor and arrayed in clerical 
robes, — and the clergyman, standing in the chan- 
cel, beats time with his fingers, and noble ladies 
nod their heads in unison ; when the barytone con- 
cludes, and the gentlemen tenors opposite smile 
upon the soloist approvingly, as much as to say, 
" You did that well, old fellow," — I seem to be 



110 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

at a show. This feehng is increased when, on the 
delivery of the prayer for the recovery of Albert 
Edward, everybody turns the leaf of the folio upon 
which the prayer has been printed, and the rustle 
reminds me of books at the opera. 

But now Charles Kingsley, the man who has 
written such charming books, ascends the pulpit ; 
and I listen, expecting to hear manly words from 
one who has done so much for muscular Christian- 
ity. I see a sharp-featured, iron-gray-headed man, 
with hard lines about the mouth ', I hear one of 
the harshest of voices and worst of speakers ; but, 
as we are neither responsible for features nor 
voices, I wait to be moved by the matter of his 
discourse. '' And he bowed the heart of the men 
of Judah as the heart of one man." That is the 
text for just such remarks, apropos of the Prince 
of Wales, as would make a leader in any of the 
daily papers. If the reverend canon says "as one 
man " once, he repeats it six or eight times. The 
heart of the nation is bowed as one man. Loyalty 
is contagious. Does the canon mean that it is a 
disease] Business men have given way to it. 
" No shame to them if they live by business," 
declares Kingsley, which is very good of him. 
" They may not speak eloquently," — how can 
they, being business men 1 We in America know 



DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS, AND KINGSLEY. Ill 

how incompatible are business and eloquence. 
But the canon is quite sure of the earnestness of 
business men; and he makes an apt quotation 
from Shakespeare, quite fashionable of late, about 
one touch of nature making the whole world kin, 
— the touch of nature being, of course, the 
Prince of Wales. And the cause of all this 
emotion is loyalty, pure and simple, — one of 
those old hereditary instincts by which the his- 
tories of whole nations, whole races, are guided ; 
an attachment to some royal race whom the peo- 
ple conceive to be set over them by God ; an 
attachment transmitted by their forefathers, and 
which they must transmit to their children as a 
national inheritance. Their sovereign is to them 
the divinely appointed symbol of the unity of 
their country. "Royalty is indeed God's ordi- 
nance, and a king they must have, not merely for 
the sake of the nation's security and peace, but for 
the sake of their own self-respect. A free man never 
felt himself so free as when obeying those whom 
the laws of his country had set over him " ; from 
which statement we see what idiots our Puritan 
fathers were to leave England, and how base have 
been the careers of Garrison, John Brown, and 
others of their ilk. '' An able man never felt him- 
self so able as when he was following the lead of 



112 AMERICANS ABB OAD. 

an abler man than himself," declares the canon ; 
and so say all of us, only I don't happen to sedp 
the connection between kings and ability. 

Then, added to loyalty there is chivalry, — the 
chivalry that regards "the widowed Qneen and 
infant Prince as a precious jewel, — an heirloom 
for which the people are responsible to God. It 
helped to make our forefathers, and " (here the 
canon shakes his finger at the congregation, and 
speaks as with Divine authority) " I beg you to 

remember it helps to make us If any cynic 

sneer" (we had been told, a few minutes before, 
that there were no cynics in England) ''at this 
sudden burst of loyalty, and speak of it as un- 
reasoning and childish, answer him not Give 

not that which is holy to the dogs, and cast not 
your pearls before swine." The dogs and swine, 
in this instance, are John Stuart Mill, Sir Charles 
Dilke, P. A. Taylor, all Englishmen who doubt 
the divinity that doth hedge a king, and all 
Americans who have not sent flunky telegrams 
to England, with the assurance that a great Re- 
public exhibits, "as one man," the most intense 
anxiety with regard to the Prince of Wales. 
" More than one foreign nation," continues Kings- 
ley, " is now looking on, with ivonder and envfj, at 
the sight which England, for the last two weeks, 



DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS, AND KINGSLEY. 113 

has presented." America, having sent telegrams, 
must be one of them. " God grant that they may 
understand how wide and how deep an application 
is the great law, * Except ye be converted, changed, 
and become as little children, ye shall in no wise 
enter into the kingdom of heaven ' " ; which means, 
if it means anything, that if Americans do not 
embrace monarchy they will go to hell. It must 
mean this, for a moment later the divinely ap- 
pointed canon refers to these foreign nations — 
one of them being France, of course — as " pulling 
to pieces at their own irreverent fancy the most 
ancient institutions, to build up fresh baby-houses 
out of the fragments, as a child does with its 
broken toys." Canon Kingsley is quite sure that, 
in visiting the Prince of Wales with typhoid fever, 
" God meant to bow our hearts as the heart of 
one man, and he has, I trust, I hope, I pray, done 
that which he meant to do." It is very kind of 
the canon to hope that God has carried out his 
plans. "God grant that it" — the typhoid fever 
— " may fill us with some of that charity which 
.... makes us thrust aside henceforth, in digni- 
fied disgust, those who sit in the seat of the 
scornful, the cynic and the slanderer, the ribald 
and the rebel." The charity which pervades the 
canon at this particular moment is j)eculiar. If 

u 



114 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

you did not know that he could not be in a 
passion, you would declare him to be about as 
angry as is possible for a gentleman. Then I am 
struck by this second reference to the cynic, the 
rebel, etc. If England is bowed ''as one man," 
how can there be rebels and cynics % I actually 
begin to doubt whether Kingsley believes his own 
protestations. And so it goes on, as wretched a 
piece of literary work as I ever listened to ; 
illogical as I show ; unmanly, unworthy of an 
Englishman, basely snobbish. I watch Glad- 
stone's face, — he looks like Webster shaved down 
and diluted, — but the fixed, anxious expression 
tells no tales. I look at the rest of the congrega- 
tion, and see no change from the stolidity which 
marked their faces upon entering the chapel. I 
believe with Kingsle}^ that " they have gone back 
— for a moment at least — to England's child- 
hood, to the mood of England when she was still 
young." I do not believe it is second childhood, 
for again I believe with Kingsley that the " old 
British oak is sound at the root," and that the 
peojDle will repudiate the blasphemy of Divine 
right which has been preached and written since a 
good-natured but by no means clever or exemplary 
young man has fallen a victim to a fever from 
which he is likely to recover, and which has 
stricken down many nobler and better. 



OPENING OF PARLIAMENT. 




London, February 6, 1872. 
HEN the historical young gentleman was 
bullied into learning the alphabet, he ex- 
pressed very great doubt as to whether 
it was worth while 2:oino: throuQ;h so much to 
arrive at so little. For "alphabet" read "open- 
ing of the British Parliament," and you will know 
the state of my feelings. Like Emerson's Brahma, 
" I am the doubter and the doubt." But the in- 
quiring American mind must wreak itself upon 
novelty ; and though novelty be as unpalatable as 
a dose of medicine, the undegenerate republican 
whose " bright home is in the settin' sun " will not 
shrink from the responsibilities of his birth. There- 
fore I said to myself, " I will assist at the opening 
of Parliament." Do you think it as easily done as 
said ] 

Americans who visit Washington, taking posses- 
sion of the Capitol as though they owned it, and 
expressing great disgust if the galleries are not 



116 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

large enough to seat every free and independent 
voter, — Americans, I repeat, little appreciate the 
amount of strategy or diplomacy or grand and 
lofty influences required to obtain passports to the 
Houses of Parliament. If, unfortunately, you hap- 
pen to be an ordinary Englishman, with no ances- 
tors worth speaking of, your case is hopeless, unless 
you know an M. P. who wants your vote, and is 
therefore desirous of being civil. And even then 
the M. P. is required to give at least a week's 
notice if the admission be for the Ladies' Gallery 
in the House of Commons ; so that the free-born 
Briton is really a beggar in the house which 
depends upon him for existence. If you are an 
American, your chances are better than that of 
the best of Britons. Lords and Commons are 
readier to oblige, and the American Legation 
exerts itself with effect upon the mighty poten- 
tate by whose sovereign pleasure a select few ai'e 
permitted to be tolerated within the holy of holies. 
Yet when only three tickets are doled out to our 
Legation, it requires the art of a veteran to cap- 
ture one of them. 

The Queen does not open Parliament, therefore 
everybody is allowed to go in morning dress. As 
I drive up to the peers' entrance in a cab, I do 
not expect to be regarded with any other feeling 



OPENING OF PARLIAMENT. 117 

than that of contempt ; but as one spectator says 
to another in a stage whisper, '' I should n't 
wonder if she was a peeress," I feel that repub- 
licans may attain their true stature, even upon 
emerging from that most ignoble of vehicles, a 
London '' four-wheeler." Then a porter, in un- 
limited scarlet and gold-lace, tears off a portion of 
my ticket and asks me to turn to my right. An- 
other gilded gentleman opens a door and bids me 
pursue my winding way. Treading soft carpets, 
through a long passageway, I mount steps. An- 
other imposing scarlet and gold-laced gentleman 
directs me to the left. More passageways, more 
gold-lace, more stairs, until I begin to feel like a 
corkscrew, and wonder whether I shall ever be 
able to straighten myself. At the top of the 
steepest stairs I am requested to halt, and an old 
man takes the remains of my ticket. As he does 
so, an official says to him, " I say, where 's the 
sherry 1 " I think, ''Well, if am a corkscrew, I 
might volunteer my services in opening a fresh 
bottle " ; but on second thoughts I recall Sir 
Wilfred Lawson and his Permissive bill, and de- 
termine to turn evidence. If the honorable baro- 
net takes the " Tribune," and reads it as carefully 
as every M. P. should, he will learn that even the 
House of Lords has, in common with other houses 



118 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

of entertainment for man and beast, its " bottle 
and jug department." 

At last I reach the goal of my desires. I am 
seated in the Strangers' or North Gallery. Oppo- 
site, far below on the floor, is the throne. Adjoin- 
ing the Strangers' Gallery, but on a lower tier, 
is the Reporters' Gallery. East and west runs 
a narrow gallery with one row of seats, gener- 
ally reserved for peeresses, but on this occasion 
devoted to the diplomatic corps, who are con- 
spicuous by their absence, the United States and 
India excepted. In parallel rows, east and west, 
are the red morocco benches of the Lords, partially 
filled on the conservative side by sombrely dressed 
women who are supposed to be peeresses, but 
who for the most part are friends admitted to the 
floor by courtesy. No woman, peeress or other- 
wise, will care to be present at more than one 
opening of Parliament, unless the Queen and gor- 
geous array are the order of the day. The best- 
clressed and most stylish looking woman on the 
floor is an American. The only portion of the 
hall that is filled is the Strangers' Gallery. Every 
one around me is English, and the silence and 
decorum are oppressive. My eyes go in search of 
the two other Americans to whom tickets have 
been given. There they are. I know them at a 



OPENING OF PARIJAMENT. 119 

glance. A man and a woman, actually laughing 
and talking, actually interested in everything, so 
bent upon knowing who 's who that an amiable 
Englishman in front of them undertakes the part 
of cicerone. In the distance looms a fourth 
American. How did he gain admission 1 Of course 
he is a journalist ; of course a man stops him in 
the street, tells him he has a ticket for sale ; the 
American buys it for two shillings and sixpence, 
and, without having made the slightest effort, he 
finds himself master of the situation. Americans 
are the cats of humanity. They have nine lives, 
and always alight on their feet. 

The North Gallery does not accommodate more 
than a hundred people, and is not fair to gaze 
upon. An elderly lady whispers to her neighbor 
that a third lady, who is very corpulent and very 
red in the face, resembles the Queen. Then the 
corpulent and red-faced lady is stared at. Then 
an Indian appears swathed in exquisite silks that 
I long to cut up into jackets and Dolly Vardens. 
He wears white kid gloves and a great diamond 
ring outside, and his head is done up in what, at a 
distance, looks like crash towelling, but is n't. This 
nabob sits erect, moves not a muscle, nurses a great 
cane, and seems to be even less in harmony with 
the nineteenth century than the House of Lords 



120 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

itself. Having calculated the number of yards of 
silk in his attire, I turn to the fine stained-glass 
windows, through which a dim light peers into 
the House, as though rather afraid of entering 
without the Lord Chamberlain's permission. It is 
a stately hall, but in no way adequate to the re- 
quirements of either legislators or public. It 
will serve as a fine committee-room for the coming 
republic. These fine stained windows represent 
the kings and queens of England ; but Henry 
VIII., my nearest neighbor, is shorn of his fair 
proportions, being represented with but two wives, 
Katherine of Arragon and Ann Boleyn. Whether 
there was not glass enough to go round, or whether 
it was thought necessary to draw the line some- 
where, is a profound question which my inner 
consciousness is incapable of answering. 

While I am contemplating this much-married 
king, General Schenck, William M. Evarts, George 
H. Boker, our new Minister at Constantinople, and 
General Woodhull, enter the diplomatic gallery. 
Four more strongly marked types of America it 
would be difficult to bring together. Wiry, thin, 
acute, incisive New England, with features as 
sharp as the intellect ; the shrewd, robust com- 
mon-sense and hearty good-nature of the West; 
and the tall figure and well-rounded features of 



OPENING OF PARLIAMENT. .121 

Pennsylvania's elect. Then Mr. Slingsby Bethell, 
the reading clerk, in white wig, black gown, and 
muddy boots, appears upon the floor. A few 
peers shake hands with a few ladies ; nobody 
seems inclined to occnpy the empty benches ; Sir 
Augustus Clifford, the usher of the Black Rod, 
walks about in a gilded uniform, and the Bishop 
of Hereford makes bold to take his seat. He is 
followed by four other bishops, who, in their black 
gowns and white sleeves, look, when seated, as 
though they had got as far as their waistcoats, and, 
from absence of mind, had left their coats at 
home. Those who love lords have little oppor- 
tunity of feeding their noble passion. The Lords 
will not appear, but at two o'clock we have the 
exquisite satisfaction of gazing upon the Royal 
Commissioners, the Lord Chancellor (Lord Hath- 
erly), the Marquis of Ripon, Lord Halifax, Lord 
Sydney, and Lord Bessborough. Not Solomon in 
all his glory was arrayed like one of these. They 
appear clothed in scarlet robes that, on the right 
side, are slashed with white, so that you think a very 
little of barbers' poles and a good deal of clowns 
in morning-gowns. The Lord Chancellor wears a 
wig; the others do not. The Lord Chancellor 
wears a black cocked hat ; the others wear cha- 
peaux. They all seat themselves on a red bench 
6 



122 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

before the throne, the Lord Chancellor in the mid- 
dle. " How would you feel in such clothes 1 " asks 
one distinguished American of another. " Like a 
confounded fool " is his prompt reply. Somebody 
puts a red and gold satchel of unknown significance 
on the table before the Commissioners, Somebody 
else carries the mace about. It seems very heavy 
and a great burtlen. The bearer does not know 
what to do with it, so he puts it away in a corner, 
— a very good place for it. The Black Rod bows 
before the Commissioners, then goes in search of 
the House of Commons. You hear a roar, as of 
waves dashing against breakers ; nearer and 
nearer, until you know that the Commoners have 
obeyed the summons. You do not see them, as 
they stand directly under the North Gallery. 
Then the reading clerk mumbles something that 
you cannot hear, but which you know to be the 
Royal Commission authorizing the noble gentle- 
men on the bench and " our well-beloved son, the 
Prince of Wales," to act on behalf of her Majesty. 
As each Commissioner is named, he removes his 
hat, and all the hats are raised on the entrance of 
the Commons. This reading over, the Lord Chan- 
cellor proceeds with the Queen's Speech, so called 
because the Queen has nothing in the world to do 
with it. The Lord Chancellor may be the cleverest 



OPENING OF PARLIAMENT. 123 

of men, — I dare say he is, — but if a school-boy 
in America were to make such work of a reading- 
losson as the Lord Chancellor does of the Speech, 
he would be sent to the foot of his class. " Never, 
perhaps, were royal words so misread, so stumbled 
over, so jumbled together, or so hopelessly con- 
fused," says the " Standard." For the first time in 
my life I find myself agreeing with a conservative 
journal. The Lord Chancellor is near-sighted, 
loses his jilace, can't see out of his glasses, and, if 
it were not for the prompting of Lord Ripon, I 
don't know what would become of him. How- 
ever, he gets through, and when he comes to the 
Alabama clause General Schenck's e^-es grow 
keener, and Mr. Evarts pays close attention. 
" Her Majesty's speech appears to me as full of 
bad grammar as is usually found in documents of 
this kind," declares the Duke of Richmond ;" and 
it is something to say that in this respect the 
speech does not f\\ll below the level of any of its 
predecessors." But, with all its bad grammar, 
Latin words, and Johnsonian sentences, it is soon 
over ; the Commoners depart as they came ; the 
Commissioners again remove their hats ; we put 
on our shawls, like the Arabs, and quietly steal 
away. 

" For the love of God, good lady, sweet lady, 



124 



AMERICANS ABROAD. 



help a poor woman who is starvmg ! Buy a few 
flowers; do, dear lady." This is the cry that 
meets me as I leave the Houses of Parhament. I 
think of the men in gold-lace paid to do nothing ; 
I think of the House of Lords; I think of the 
Seven Dials ; I wonder how long it will be before 
the good time coming arrives, and I thank God for 
America. 




REPUBLICANISM IN ENGLAND. 




London, February 20, 1S72. 
DRIVE to the House of Commons to 
hear Gladstone defend his course in the 
translation of Sir Robert Collier, a trans- 
lation which requires more explanation than if 
Collier had remained in the original. The confu- 
sion of tongues in consequence is almost equal to 
that of Babel. It is early, — by which I mean 
that it is three p. m., — few members have ar- 
rived ; and while one genial M. P. tells me how 
well his son has been treated in America, another 
invites me to take the Speaker's chair, which, 
though rather hard to sit on, is very becoming. 
Dignity and authority steal o'er me, and I feel that, 
in "the coming race," Dame Britannia will preside 
with far more grace, though hardly with more 
ability, than the Brand-new Speaker. She will 
not spoil her good looks by donning a black gown 
and a dreadful big wig, whereby hangs a tail. 



126 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

Through mazy windings I attain the ladies' gal- 
lery. The door is locked, and a dozen women 
stand up for half an hour, when, after comparing 
our names with those on the list, the usher per- 
mits us to enter. 

Tired at the beginning, exasperation is soon 
added to fatigue, for the Ladies' Gallery of the 
House of Commons is nothing more nor less 
than a box capable of holding about thirty women, 
only a dozen of whom can occupy front seats and 
see and hear with the least comfort. In front of 
this coop is a heavy iron grille, so that I soon 
feel as if I were shut up in prison for some un- 
known crime. I can flatten my nose against the 
bars and see without being seen, — by which ar- 
rangement the intellect of mighty man is not dis- 
tracted by the presence of lovely woman ; though 
why the gallery in the House of- Lords should be 
open, and this of the Commons shut, puzzles the 
understanding. Are strangers to conclude that 
the Lords can bear the feminine ordeal, because 
they have no brains to be distracted 1 Did I say 
that I could see without being seen *? At best, I 
see with difficulty, first, because the gallery is 
perched high in the air, — in very bad air, let mo 
add, — and, secondly, because M. P.'s will wear 
their hats. To distinguish one man from another 



REPUBLICANISM IN ENGLAND. 127 

requii'es far-sighted vision, and the effect of sev- 
eral hundred hats walking about or sitting is not 
more imposing than an equal number of portable 
stove-pipes. Gladstone is almost the only man 
whose head is regularly uncovered. From the 
contemplation of hats you may proceed to the 
study of boots, the next object of overpowering- 
prominence. The majority of the members look 
as though they had good cooks, good tailors, and 
were good fellows. At 3.45 o'clock the Usher of 
the Black Rod bows in the Speaker, prayers are 
delivered by the Chaplain, but, of course, w'e in 
the gallery hear nothing. The Chaplain probably 
thinks that the Creator has heard prayers often 
enough to have committed them to memory. 
Having gone through this laborious exercise, the 
Chaplain backs out of the House, and the mem- 
bers proceed to business. 

There is private business and there are peti- 
tions ; members jump up and say things to them- 
selves, apparently, for not one word do we women 
hear. Finally, in walk the Ministry, and in walk 
the Opposition, the author of "Lothair" at their 
head. 

With each particular hair smootli to tli' end, 
Like flax upon the yielding sticking- wax. 

Then the bullying and badgering begin. Dis- 



128 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

raeli sticks pins into Gladstone by asking about 
the time when the " American Case " (was there 
ever such a hard easel) was first brought before 
the government. Mr. Bouverie (Opposition) wants 
to know if the Premier really did w^rite a letter to 
the correspondent of the '' New York World," and 
a howl of derision goes up from the Tories at 
thought of Gladstone's condescending to write to 
a journalist. When the Badgered One declares 
that his letter was in answer to a desire for an 
interview, the idea is considered such a wonderful 
joke as to excite shouts of laughter. Gladstone, 
however, gives everybody to understand that he 
sees no compromise of dignity in writing to repre- 
sentatives of great American journals, and informs 
the House that he is called upon daily to address 
persons of far less consequence, which explanation 
silences the opposition, and is not fully reported in 
' the papers, perhaps from fear of its effect upon Great 
American Interviewers. At last Mr. Cross, a little 
man with blond hair and mutton-chop whiskers, 
rises to censure the government for Sir Robert 
Collier's translation. When he rises I rise, for 
now I know that Gladstone will not reply before 
midnight, and there is something infinitely more 
exciting to be done than to hear the Ministry 
Cross-questioned on a subject that has little in- 
terest for foreigners. 



REPUBLICANISM IN ENGLAND. 12D 

I leave, and, fortified by dinner, my next ap- 
pearance is in the vestry hall of Chelsea, where 
Sir Charles Dilke and Sir Henry Hoare are to 
address their constituents. The prediction is that 
I shall return home in small pieces. The game 
is worth the small pieces, and I go. The meeting 
ought to have taken place on the 17th of Jan- 
uary, but was not then permitted on account of 
the Princely Typhoid. Indeed, it was with great 
difficulty that the hall was obtained at all, a ma- 
jority of one only being in fiivor of allowing the 
arch-fiend Dilke to have a hearino; in his own 
borough. And it is not a little curious to know 
that this one vestryman who decided in Dilke's 
favor is a music-teacher who, while sharing the 
young M. P.'s opinions, did not dare to support 
him several years ago on account of the great 
pecuniary injury a liberal vote would have in- 
volved. His pupils would have deserted him. 

" I should like to punch your head ! " exclaims 
a tall man in a long coat, going up to Dilke as he 
leaves his house for the meeting. " Two can play 
at that game ; perhaps I should like to punch 
yours," replies Dilke. The man turns like a cow- 
ard, and though Sir Charles follows him for a short 
distance, he shows no fight, and the republican 
enters the vestry-hall none the worse for a threat. 
6* I 



1 30 ^ MERICANS ABE OA D. 

And such a meeting as it is ! The hall ordinarily 
seats fifteen hundred, but to-night the benches 
have been so arranged as to accommodate eighteen 
hundred, while two hundred more than the hall 
can hold have by some means contrived to gain a 
footing. One youth, climbing on the shoulders of 
the crowd, swings himself up to the outside iron 
railing of the gallery, and, not allowed to climb 
over, clings to the railing, sitting, apparently, on 
nothing for the entire evening. Others have ob- 
tained a footing on a slight projection of the wall; 
others, still, look as though they were standing 
on people's heads, but in reality have mounted a 
barricade near the door. Two thousand v/ithin, 
there are quite as many without who clamor to be 
let in, and, pushing, cause hundreds near the door 
to sm'ge like the sea in a storm. 

As we appear on the narrow platform, the cheer- 
ing and applause for Dilke is almost deafening. It 
is no mob that applauds. If these men be the 
" roughs of London," as they are called in society, 
then I can truthfully say that I have rarely seen 
in England a more intelligent body of men. The 
heads of the majority are good, many are more 
than good, several are evideutly gentlemen, and 
unwashed faces are few. Four women have been 
brave enough to venture into the body of the hall ; 



REPUBLICANISM IN ENGLAND. 131- 

and four women, including Lady Diike, on the 
platform, do their best to represent advanced 
Avomen's opinions. It is useless for the genial 
chairman to try to be heard. The audience is 
perfectly good-natured, but it is uproarious and 
will listen to nobody but Dilke, who, upon rising, 
is received with hats, lungs, hands, feet, and 
pocket-handkerchiefs. Then the dense mass set- 
tles itself to hear one of the fairest and most 
enlightened speeches ever delivered on this side 
of the Atlantic. Without prelude, without any 
attempt at rhetoric, Dilke plunges at once into the 
middle of the American Case, treating the matter 
with an intelligence as creditable to him as it is 
rare in Parliament. 

Ah, if all Americans who believe we have no 
friends in England could see the hearty good-will to 
us beaming in every face in this audience, could hear 
the applause with which Dilke's opinions are re- 
ceived, and could feel the sympathetic magnetism, 
they would draw a very wide distinction between 
the people and press of England ! Speaking of the 
advantages of a republican form of government, 
and stating that he shall also introduce in the 
House of Commons a bill to provide for the public 
management of lands already public, that he shall 
move his last year's amendments to the Ballot Bill, 



132 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

by which the poll, instead of closing at four, will 
be kept open to eight o'clock, and that he shall 
move for the redistribution of seats in Parliament, 
Dilke concludes by saying : — 

" The details, then, of all my statements, I shall reserve 
for the House of Commons, and one only other word 
will I Titter at present on this question. I Avould beg 
you that when men, from interested motives, or from 
ignorance, accuse those of us who say these things of 
saying them by w^ay of personal attack upon the Queen, 
to answer only, that were wx to bring into account the 
character of the present occupant of the throne, we 
should — I should — state it as an argument telling in 
favor of monarchy in England, that it has produced a 
sovereign who, beside being a model wife and mother, 
has so just a perception of the true position of a con- 
stitutional ruler as her Majesty. [A^jplause.] But, 
happily for the future of English republicanism, it 
rests not at present upon, and I hope may never 
come to be supported by, any personal arguments at 
all." [Cheers.] 

0, the cheers that go up as Charles Dilke sits 
down ! A red banner, bearing the inscription in 
gold letters, " Honor to Dilke," is hung from the 
gallery. It is greeted with three times three 
cheers, and three times three again. It is worth 
while being abused to be so loved ; and, for my 
part, I feel more at home among these honest 



REPUBLICANISM IN ENGLAND. 133 

Republicans than I have felt since I left America. 
But now matters begin to look serious. Sir Henry 
Hoare rises, and every sound of which the human 
throat is capable is hurled at him. I hear every 
note in almost every octave, flats and sharps, groans 
in every vowel. Men rise and shake their fists at 
the honorable baronet, who never flinches, although 
he knows he is hated for having repudiated the 
Republican tendencies of his colleague. In vain 
the chairman calls the meeting to order. At last 
Dilke rises, and in deference to him the audience 
subsides until Sir Henry tells them that England 
is more of a republic than America, when the roar- 
ing, and surging begin again. " Who among you 
are fit to be republicans % " shrieks Sir Henry ; 
whereupon everybody laughs contemptuously, and 
one fellow jumps up, exclaiming, with a broad grin 
on his face, " Look at me. I am ! " Sir Henry is 
in bad odor, and though he is occasionally ap- 
plauded, there is no sympathy between him and 
his hearers. Sir Henry shows pluck to the end, 
and sits down amid great confusion. When the 
resolution of confidence in both members is put to 
the meeting, the wildest dissent follows. " Put 
them separately " screams everybod3\ Somebody 
suggests a compromise, that after passing the 
resolution a special vote of confidence shall be 



134 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

accorded to Sir Charles Dilke. No, indeed. The 
people will listen to nothing of the sort, and it is 
not until Sir Charles begs them as a special favor 
to himself to accept the resolution, that they 
acquiesce. When it and the rider are put and 
the vote is taken, four thousand hands fly into 
the air, looking like skeleton birds on the wing. 
It is an exciting moment, a complete victory for 
Sir Charles Dilke ; and, when he drives away, the 
cheers of five thousand Republicans make finer 
music than the Coldstream Band. Do you think 
that the typhoid fever has killed the British re- 
public 1 

It is a quarter past eleven, not too late for 
Gladstone, so back I drive to the House of Com- 
mons in time to hear Mr. Denham and Mr. Hardy 
attack the government, and hear Gladstone's 
response. The Premier is fluent, but he is not 
eloquent. How can he be, when his cry is 
" Misericordia " 1 A speaker who begs the ques- 
tion cannot fire one with burning oratory. I hear 
Gladstone, but it is Gladstone at the ebb ; and 
when he sits down I feel that the victory he is to 
gain will be almost equal to a defeat. The division 
is taken, Fawcett, the Republican, walks off" with 
the Tories, seven other Liberals follow in his 
wake, several prominent Radicals have remained 



REPUBLICANISM IN ENGLAND. 135 

away altogether, while others have departed but a 
short time ; and Avhen Cl-lyn, the Liberal whip, de- 
clares the government to have beaten by twenty- 
seven votes, a faint cheer goes up that is in 
strange contrast with the huzzas I have heard 
earlier in the evening. When I leave, Gladstone 
and Glyn are hobnobbing and smiling ; but the 
Premier's smile is forced, and I wonder whether 
he has heard the echo of those Repubhcan voices 
in Chelsea. 




THE THANKSGIVING SERVICE. 




London, February 28, 1872. 
PURPOSE that on Tuesday, the 27th 
instant, conformably to the good and 
becoming usage of former days, the bless- 
ing thus received shall be acknov/ledged on be- 
half of the nation by a Thanksgiving in the 
metropolitan cathedral. At this celebration, it is 
my desire and hope to be present." Who pur- 
poses'? Queen Victoria. What blessing 1 Is it 
necessary to answer'? Is not "blessing" synony- 
mous "with the Prince of Wales's restoration to 
health 1 Such a naive question comes of liv- 
ing under republican institutions. As soon as 
the Queen decided to visit St. Paul's in state, 
everybody else wanted to go. From loyalty, do 
you suppose *? Arthur Helps, who ought to know, 
declares that Londoners are singularly full of 
curiosity. When it becomes impossible for every- 
body to attend a celebration, of course everybody 
wants to go. Four hundred Americans besieged 



THE THANKSGIVING SERVICE. 137 

the Legation for tickets, and ont of the fonr hun- 
dred, eig'ht obtained the desired entree. The 
Lord Chamberlain is mighty. He wields his 
sceptre with becoming despotism, and does unto 
everybody as he would not have anybody do unto 
him. Not only was it a great favor to have any 
ticket at all, but the Great Chamberlain decreed 
that on your tickets should be written your name 
by the United States Minister, and by nobody 
else, and that no ticket should be transferable ! 
People dared not accept tickets from friends who 
were detained at home by illness, for fear of being 
forced to perjure themselves at the doors of St. 
Paul's. 1 fully expected to be challenged, to take 
my oath that I was myself, and that General 
Schenck had, with his own right hand, written 
my name on the entrance card, which was big 
enough to admit Brigham Young and his entire 
family. Unnecessary fear ! The tickets were not 
examined, were not even taken from us, and 
several that I picked up after the ceremony indi- 
cated no name whatever. So much for absurd 
edicts of the Lord Chamberlain, who would have 
prevented unmarried members of Parliament from 
taking ladies had not Montague Guest struck for 
his " sisters " and his fires. 

Having caught my ticket, kind friends who had 



138 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

none advised me not to go ; first, because I 'd prob- 
ably never reach St. Paul's, as there were to be 
twelve miles of carriages, and how could I be in- 
side of Temple Bar before eleven 1 Or, if I did get 
there, how could I find my carriage after the per- 
formance, — I mean ceremony 1 and then what 
would prevent my being crushed to death by the 
crowd I " But if you persist in your resolution," 
said the last adviser, " go early." The " Times " de- 
voted columns to the same refrain, so that thirteen 
thousand men and women passed one of the most 
wretchedly sleepless nights of their lives in a 
feverish desire to obey the mandate of The Thun- 
derer. In London, gaslight is so infinitely superior 
to daylight as to tempt one never to go to bed — 
and never to get up. Picture, then, thirteen thou- 
sand yawning human beings, snatched from an ear- 
ly nightmare, bolting their breakfasts as fast as jug- 
glers bolt swords, . cramming luncheons into their 
pockets, rushing into carriages, and being driven 
off to see what a republican weekly here calls the 
"■ Great Raree Show." Over-anxious ticket-holders 
left their homes as early as 6.30, the very thought 
of which hour plunges a Londoner in suicidal gloom. 
Half past eight sees us on our winding way, and 
the first flag we drive under is the Star-Spangled 
Banner, displayed in Piccadilly by the Christy 



THE THANKSGIVING SERVICE. 139 

minstrels. " An eager and a nipping air " does 
not add to the hilarity of the hour, and if this be 
" Queen's weather," the less we have of it the bet- 
ter. Through Leicester Square, sullen and undec- 
orated, through narrow streets, in which loyalty 
has not broken out, we at last reach the Strand, 
and find ourselves one of an immense cortege. 
Everybody seems to be good-natured, every- 
body that is not in the street is looking out of 
windows ; and when I see these faces, so thankful 
to be let loose from w^ork for outdoor celebration, 
I wonder England does not invent a few" holidays 
to save her populace from the deadening effect 
of everlasting grind. " Scott, the champion bill- 
poster," " ' The Daily News,' — world-wide circu- 
lation," " ' The Daily Telegraph,' — largest circula- 
tion in the world," and " The Echo " do an im- 
mense business in advertising. They burst forth in 
every direction. As decorations they are danger- 
ous rivals to "God bless the Prince of Wales ! " 
" The Echo," dressed in dark blue, absolutely serv- 
ing as a neat trimming to St. Martin's Le Grand. 
A few people wear the national colors, but other- 
wise there is no attempt at personal adornment, 
except in a man seated over the suggestive sign 
of C. Sharj?, who wears an enormous worsted sun- 
flower in his buttonhole. 



140 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

On one side we read Scriptural mottoes, 
"We praise thee, Lord," "My Son was dead, 
and is alive again" ; on the other we see gayly 
dressed women sittinoj in the windows of qtoo;- 
shops, with gin-bottles and " the Prince of Wales's 
ale, recommended by the faculty," above their 
heads. Carlo Gatti, pastry-cook, has attempted to 
trim the fa9ades of his shop as he would a wed- 
ding-cake. He succeeds. Children in Highland 
dress stand upon the platform of a church, and 
the crowd playfully ask us to show our tickets. 
Figaro hangs out a banner, addressed to the Prince 
of Wales, which strikes me as peculiar. ''Wel- 
come, and many happy returns," says Figaro. 
Keturns of what 1 Typhoid fever 1 I doubt 
whether the Deity ever was so patronized as on 
this occasion. "We give thanks. Lord Jesus, 
King of kings, for the recovery," etc. Then, as 
being particularly appropriate to this recovery, we 
are told to " Put your trust in God, boys, and keep 
your powder dry." "God save us all " is about 
the only generous motto I discover, every other 
being determined that nobody shall be saved but 
the royal ftimily. Then come elegant extracts 
from the national hymn. " Confound their poli- 
tics, frustrate their knavish tricks," is a great 
favorite, undoubtedly selected with a view to cov- 



THE THANKSGIVING SERVICE. Ul 

eriiig Republicans with confusion. Should they 
rally irom this, they are sure to be frightened out 
of their heresy if they stand before the " Fun" office 
and see Dilke tossed on high by the British lion. 
In Fleet Street the scene is really picturesque, in 
spite of poverty of ingenuity in decoration. The 
flags and gay colors give it an almost Venetian look ; 
and London proves that, with more thought, more 
time, and united enthusiasm, she can retrieve her 
reputation for ugliness and want of color. But 
the people are most interesting to contemplate. 
Boys dance breakdowns; men on the tops of 
houses are to take care of themselves. " There 
goes Roger ! " screams the crowd, as a very fat 
cab-driver, not unlike the Tichbome claimant, 
passes along. A man with a bouquet of violets 
enacts the iwima donna. *' God bless your pretty 
face ! " says a woman with flowers, addressing a 
gray-haired New-Yorker in our carriage. Is it 
necessary to add that the flattery produces the 
desired effect ? Programmes of the day's proceed- 
ings are for sale by everybody, and we buy, and 
buy, and buy, the last seller assuring us that his is 
the best because it has the prettiest cover. When 
we arrive at St. Paul's, we are presented with 
gorgeous official programmes, and discover the 
others to be worthless. 



142 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

We pass Temple Bar, which is transformed from 
a grim old warrior into a Columbine. There, in a 
window, sit two Bostonians who have paid eighteen 
guineas for their seats. We drive over a sanded 
floor ; we are chaffed as everybody must be chaffed 
by a London crowd ; we are desired to remember 
them to Wales, and say they '11 call to-morrow. 
" There are no two ways about us ! " shouts a man 
who is forced to go in one direction when he would 
go in another. Policemen are bullied and badgered 
in a manner that passeth all understanding. But 
never mind them. England expects every man to 
do his duty ; and here we are at St. Paul's, enter- 
ing by the southwest door. Without difficulty 
we reach the corner devoted to " distinguished for- 
eigners," and find that, although it is but ten 
o'clock, the cathedral is rapidly filling. Ushers 
in dress-coats politely show us to our seats, and 
then we proceed to survey the scene. Remember 
that the structure is not Gothic, that we are in 
the southwest corner of the dome, with a gallery 
above us devoted to the Queen's household, with 
both naves cut off from view, and with nothing in 
sight but the royal pew, which is in front of us. 
There are rows of chairs in front of the pew, in- 
tended for peers and commoners, and distant gal- 
leries opposite are trimmed with red bunting. We 



THE THANKSGIVING SERVICE. 143 

know that the Diplomatic Corps is in the north 
corner, corresponding to ours, but we see nothing 
of their gay plumage. They ought to have been 
placed in the body of the building, where their 
uniforms would have produced effect, — but then 
I 'm not Lord Chamberlain. 

We contemplate a few uniforms, red bunting, 
and an empty royal pew for some time. One 
"distinguished foreigner," a lady, in front of me, 
reads the '^ Times." My left-hand neighbor reads 
'' My Wife and I." A gentleman near by is ab- 
sorbed in " Ginx's Baby." He won't look at any- 
thing. He calls it a "show"; has come to please 
his wife, and not even royalty distracts his atten- 
tion. And he is an Englishman! Opera-glasses 
abound, and everybody is discussing who every- 
body else is. Soon our corner is filled to over- 
flowing, and late arrivals are forced to go into a 
dark hole where they can see nothing and do noth- 
ing but catch cold. General Badeau appears in full 
uniform, and he, too, is poked into the hole ; but 
there are a few seats reserved in front, and at last 
he is permitted to occupy one. This excites the 
indignation of "distinguished foreigners" in the 
rear, who mutter imprecations on the ushers. 
Then come the Nawab Nazim and his son, the 
former looking like the typical Bluebeard, and the 



144 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

latter arrayed in emeralds that almost tempt one 
to commit robbery. Emerald drops, emerald but- 
tons, emerald everything, and all for " one little In- 
dian boy " ! What a mistake circumstances are ! 
More " distinguished foreig-ners " appear, looking 
very English and not at all distinguished. A 
prominent writer on the " Times " is seen in a 
gorgeous uniform, as representative of Paraguay. 
More Indians are ushered to the front seats, — 
one a solemn man in picturesque garb; and the 
other, a youthful woman done up in gold cloth. 
Ah, that cloth ! how well it would look converted 
into an opera-cloak ! Some declare that the man 
is the Maharajah Duleep Singh, the mediatized 
prince, who hates the Queen, and who once had 
the pleasure of seeing her Majesty arrayed in his 
jewels, — but this I disbelieve. They are great 
and solemn people. This is enough. 

Peers and peeresses flutter about, and com- 
moners begin to arrive. Lord Ripon, in court 
dress, the picture of good-nature, looks as though 
the Alabama rested lightly on his shoulders. Mr. 
Lowe smiles as blandly as though he had not met 
his match in the people v\^ho hissed him in his. pro- 
gress to the cathedral. Ah ! here come Mr. and 
Mrs. Gladstone ] she in black velvet and white 
lace, he in court imiform. Mrs. Gladstone kneels 



THE THANKSGIVING SERVICE. U5 

for one moment, and people nudge one another 
with surprise. '' Well," whispers one grande dame^ 
" 3^ou know she 's the Minister's wife, and thinks 
something is expected of her." Gladstone puts on 
his white kid gloves, and bows to his friends ; but 
his is the most worn and tired face I see. Hun- 
gry 1 how hungry we are ! So we pull out our 
luncheons, and munch, and munch, and munch. 

The grande dame in front lays aside her opera- 
glass in order to sip sherry ; and we conclude, 
w^hen we see both Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone, peers, 
peeresses, and commoners using their opera-glasses 
and deporting themselves as if they were at the 
theatre, that this truly is a religious gathering, 
and that we are all deeply impressed by the 
gravity of the occasion. 

A sensation ! everybody rises. Opera-glasses to 
the front ! I see the top of a gold mace, and 
know that the Speaker of the House has arrived. 
General suspense ensues ; a man in the organ-loft, 
who really has the best position, waves a hand- 
kerchief; "God save the Queen" is played; a 
choir of two hundred men in white robes rise ; 
the distinguished but tall women in front of me 
stand on their chairs, and I see nothing. This is 
too much, so I stand on my chair, all other women 
following the example. Had the royal pew been 
7 J 



146 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

raised four feet instead of two, every one could 
have seen with perfect ease ; but no Yankee was 
consulted. By dint of much gymnastic exercise, I 
behold the royal family, and am not impressed by 
the spectacle. I think of "the cost of royalty," 
and gaze upon the pensioners all in a row. The 
Queen is exceedingly plain ; her sons are not in 
the least good-looking ; the Prince of Wales ap- 
pears to better advantage than he has for some 
time, for the reason that he is thinner and his 
face has lost its redness. He is by no means 
pale, however, seeming to have been tanned 
by outdoor life, and appears less affected by the 
scene than any other member of his family, his 
eldest-born excepted, who, being a child, is as rest- 
less as a child ought to be. The Queen and the 
Princess Alexandra, who is really pretty and lady- 
like, bow their heads from the beginning to the 
end of the service, which, fortunately, is but three 
quarters of an hour long. Opera-glasses are 
brought to a focus on the Prince of Wales. A 
Te Deum is sung, which should be spelled tedium, 
for, composed by Mr. Goss, organist of St. Paul's, 
it is as poor a composition as one might expect, 
but is sung better than it deserves. There are 
prayers, and there is a collect. There is a prayer 
for the Queen's Majesty, and then is said the gen- 



* THE THANKSGIVING SERVICE. 147 

eral thanksgiving, with these inserted words : 
" Particularly to Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, 
who desires now to offer up his praises and thanks- 
giving for thy late mercies vouchsafed to him." 
" With the last words," says to-day's "Times," " the 
leader's voice stopped, and the perfect pause of a 
few moments, almost aivful in its intensity^ was the 
point at which the sublimity of the service cul- 
minated and reached its highest and intensest ex- 
pression." I feel nothing awful, nothing intense ; 
nothing culminates ; opera-glasses go on as before ; 
a commonplace anthem is sung, but nobody listens, 
for everybody's ears are eyes. Nor is there any 
change when the Archbishop of Canterbury begins 
his sermon, taking for his text, " Members one of 
another." 

It is the old story over again, what we have read 
in the newspapers ; how we are all more united 
than ever before. But the sermon is as brief as 
though it were the soul of wit, which is some- 
thing. A commonplace hymn follows, and then 
the Queen and her children bow and depart, fol- 
lowed by the Gold Stick in Waiting, the Mistress 
of the Robes, the First Lady of the Bedchamber, 
the Second Woman of the Bedchamber, etc., etc., 
all of whom look just like other people, only they 
are not as well dressed as our women at home. 



148 , AMERICANS ABROAD. 

The Thanksgiving is over. The organist is chary 
of his music. None was allowed before the Queen's 
arrival. An occasional spasm caused a lady 
to exclaim, " I wish that horrid organ would do 
something besides grunt." No music is per- 
mitted afterward. We leave the cathedral in 
good order and with the driest of eyes, although 
a pamphlet prophesied that we should be bathed in 
tears. Lords and ladies drive away in gorgeous 
carriages, aldermen walk about in gowns and cigars; 
I tread on the gown of a very great bigwig, but 
do no mischief; we are driven away as Lord Gran- 
ville's carriage is announced ; and when I am asked 
how I like it, I say that the Boston Peace Jubilee 
of 18G9 was so magnificently superior to it in real- 
ity, in decoration, in massing of people, in color, 
in music, and in enthusiasm, as to blot the Thanks- 
giving out of my memory. I am not impressed, 
and it is useless to assume a virtue (T) when I have 
it not. And there is a reverse to the medal of 
this Thanksgiving, which you shall see and then 
draw your moral ; for what is a Thanksgiving with- 
out a moral ? 





SECOND THOUGHTS ABOUT THE 
THANKSGIVING. 

"The Queen, as well as her son and dear daughter-in-law, 
felt that the whole nation joined with them in thanking God 
for sparing the beloved Prince of Wales's life." — Queen's Let- 
ter. 

London, March, 1872. 

N leaving St. Paul's, and passing through 
Farringdon Street, the crowd lining both 
sides of the carriageway was in poor 
clothes, and by no means meek in spirit. There 
was a settled hardness and bitterness upon the 
faces, especially upon those of the w^omen, that 
impressed me profoundly ; and as our carriage 
approached a particularly squalid group, a w^oman 
exclaimed, with a malignity that made me shud- 
der, " Here come the gems of the Court ! " We 
w^ere in a fine carriage ; we were well dressed ; 
we possessed what they could never attain to : 
therefore we were their natural enemies, and be- 
longed to the Court. Again, in Oxford Street, the 



150 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

lan^Tiage excited by the appearance of a pret- 
tily dressed boy on the box of a carriage was so 
awful as to cause the terrified mother to drive into 
a by-street. These are the people who, to quote 
the " Saturday Review," harbor no envy. No 
envy in England ! No envy in a land of castes 
and of extremes ! The idea is preposterous. And 
if there be no envy, if the Seven Dials rejoice in 
the wealth of Mayfair and Belgravia, why should 
this same "Saturday Review" declare that poor and 
rich should be separated outdoors as well as indoors ; 
that, " instead of attracting the turbulent East- 
Enders to the more civilized parts of London, they 
should be entertained with fireworks in Victoria 
Park and illuminations of conspicuous buildings 
in their own neighborhood % " 

You have heard how much the royal cortege 
was cheered, as if cheers on the 27th were founded 
on the one grand feeling of loyalty. The crowd 
cheered everybody but Lowe and Gladstone. They 
gave our carriage a reception as it passed Temple 
Bar, for no reason but that noise helped to be- 
guile the waiting hours. Probably every other 
carriage received the same attention. The people 
cheered Disraeli ; they gave an ovation to a milk- 
woman ; a postman driving a pony-cart made a 
sensation in Pall Mall. Louis Napoleon was re- 



SECOND THOUGHTS ABOUT THANKSGIVING, li)! 

ceived with acclamation ; and Sanger's Circns, 
which followed the royal procession, was mucli 
more enthusiastically welcomed than the House of 
Hanover. Then it is perfectly true that banners 
bearing the inscription, " God save the starving- 
poor ! " were held up along the royal route ; that 
they were undisturbed by the populace ; and that 
they w^ere torn down by the police, as if the prayer 
were an insult to the Queen, and the Prince of 
Wales enjoyed a monopoly of God. It is perfectly 
true that the Duke of Cambridge was received 
with disapprobation, and that the royal family 
were hissed at several points, especially in H^^de 
Park, where those who hissed were attacked by 
the police, but untouched by the people ! An 
omnibus-driver exclaimed that he " had always till 
now been down on that 'ere Dilke, but that he was 
blowed if arter this kind of thing he did not turn 
a red-hot Republican." The extreme loyalty of 
at least some of the Oxford shopkeepers may be 
judged by one of them, who remarked apropos of 
those who had purchased seats in front of his shop, 
that '^ they might tumble through and break their 
d — d necks. He had sold out at a guinea a head, 
and that was all he cared for." Let us make his- 
tory truthfully, or die. 

The illuminations were poor, and confined almost 



152 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

exclusively to shopkeepers. When one remembers 
that the Queen alone has .£173,000 to spend among 
them, a little of this loyalty may be accounted for. 
" We are aware " — again I quote the " Saturday 
Review " — " that some tradesmen may regard illu- 
mination not as a costly burden, but as a profita- 
ble advertisement, and in this point of view the 
present system is particularly objectionable. Per- 
haps the strongest impression which remains after 
one of these displays is that of its general mean- 
ness and poverty of invention, and the palpably 
commercial motive of some of the most successful 
efforts that were made. As was said on a rriem- 
orable occasion, ' We cannot all be tailors.' " This 
final remark refers to Poole, tailor to the Prince 
of Wales, w^hose shop in Saville Row is always 
brilliantly illuminated. 

But this is not aTl. Determined to probe the 
Thanksgiving to its core, I went that Tuesday 
night from the glitter of Poole's tailor-shop to the 
Hall of Science in the far eastern part of London, 
to hear Charles Bradlaugh denounce the working- 
men who had accepted invitations to St. Paul's. 
Be it known that the Queen expressed a desire to 
have the workingmen represented at this cere- 
mony ; that fifty-eight tickets were given to Mr. 
Applegarth for distribution among this body, with 



SECOND THOUGHTS ABOUT THANKSGIVING.lbS 

instructions from her Majesty that no ticket 
should be given to Odger, or to " that wicked man 
Bradlaugh." I went to hear what this " wicked 
man," otherwise "Beast Bradlaugh," otherwise 
" Brawling Bradlaugh " had to say in his defence, 
and against the historic fifty-eight workingmen 
who stultified themselves by going to St. Paul's. 
Without now entering into a criticism of Brad- 
laugh the man, I am ready to declare that he is a 
born orator, and that if he succeeds in getting into 
Parliament at the next general election, he will 
stir the House of Commons as it is not in the 
habit of being stirred. He swayed his crowded 
audience of workingmen as I have seen no audi- 
ence swayed in England. His prayer was povertj^'s 
prayer. He and his audience did not stand alone 
in their protest. Many towns and villages were 
holding meetings,— r Arlington, Hull, Sheflfield, and 
others. When the Prince of Wales was ill, Brad- 
laugh held his tongue. Now he would be the 
rankest of all cowards to keep quiet, esjjecially as 
he had been told that he dared not denounce the 
Thanksgiving, that no one would listen to him. 
The last Thanksgiving had been for what 1 For 
George the Third's recovery from lunacy, and God 
so blessed him that he drove him mad ! Did 
people realize what they were doing? If prayers 
7* 



154 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

had restored the Prince of Wales, why had not 
prayers restored Blogg, his groom'? What of 
many thousands who die in spite of prayers'? 
And what becomes of doctors and surgeons'? 
Why employ them at all, if prayers are so effica- 
cious '? And what is it of which we should be so 
thankful ? Is this man great in science ? Is he a 
statesman'? Is he orator, poet, thinker, author, 
hero-warrior % Bradlaugh did not speak of his 
last autumn manoeuvre, or of his shooting at San- 
dringham. " What has the House of Hanover done 
for us, but make our taxes fifteen times heavier 
than they were 1 God l.Iess the Prince of Wales ! 
What has he done ? We won't lie even by acqui- 
escence. But to-day teaches us a lesson. It 
teaches us that much work must be accomplished 
before the coming of the republic. It makes us 
realize the necessity of unending struggle. You 
cheer, you applaud, but I say that most of us 
Pvepublicans are only in quarantine, and I would 
n't give all of you — even you — a clean bill of 
health." When Bradlaugh sat down, he was 
greeted with round after round of applause. 
When he rose to deny the newspaper statement 
that Sir Charles Dilke had been present at St. 
Paul's, the cheering broke out anew; and this 
reminds me that when the boat bearing the mem- 



SECOND THOUGHTS ABOUT THANKSGIVING. 155 

^)ers of Parliament to St. Paul's left Westminster 
Palace, three cheers were given for the absent Sir 
Charles. 

Judge then of the marvellous unanimity of this 
people. Judge of a church ceremony, attended 
by thirteen thousand j)ersons, costing £13,000, 
— <£ 1 per head, — and for which the people who 
were not admitted are to be taxed. And what do 
the Queen and her son in commemoration of thi^ 
recovery? Her Majesty gives £ 1,000 toward the 
embellishment of St. Paul's; the Prince gives 
£ 500. The poor are forgotten, in spite of those 
protestations of press and pulpit some weeks ago, 
and everybody is asked to follow the royal ex- 
ample. '' God save the starving poor ! " 

So much for the most monstrous advertisement 
of the nineteenth century. 




REPUBLICANISM IN PARLIAMENT. 




UPROAR IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 

London, March 20, 1872. 
:0 you mean to say that you are going 



Dilke'? I am astonished. Why, he is 
a traitor ! He has assailed the Queen, and is 
doing more harm than any man in England ! If 
he wants to attack abuses, why does n't he attack 
real ones, instead of bringing up a motion to in- 
vestigate the Civil List 1 " Thus spake a lady of 
high degree, but without effect. Not only did I 
go to hear the " dreadful man," but upon arriving 
at the House of Commons yesterday, at four o'clock, 
I found the ladies' gallery filled, and the Speak- 
er's gallery, likewise devoted to women, was not 
long empty. Ever since his speech at Newcastle, 
Sir Charles Dilke has been an object of curiosity, 
if not of interest, to women. To be a Republican 
in England is to be very brutal, very ugly, very 



REPUBLICANISM IN PARLIAMENT, 157 

dirty, and very poor. At least, this is the opinion 
prevalent in high circles ; so that the idea of a 
baronet proclaiming himself anything so exceed- 
ingly outrageous and vulgar sends society into 
spasms. Nevertheless, as society has nothing in 
the world to do, society is curious, and from the 
opening of Parliament Sir Charles has been the 
lion of the House of Commons. He is the mem- 
ber who must be exhibited ; and one lady has en- 
joyed no little notoriety in being able to point 
out the monster, and to state that she actually 
knows him ! Such was the temper of the ladies' 
galleries yesterday, with honorable exceptions ; 
and the fair dames had every opportunity of grat- 
ifying their curiosity, as Sir Charles was early in 
his seat on the front row below the gangway, evi- 
dently absorbed in the speech he was to deliver. 
Petition after petition was presented ; notices 
Avere given ; Disraeli, persistent in his nagging, 
was cheered for stating that after Easter he should 
bring under the consideration of the House, Eng- 
land's relations with the United States ; Mr. Bail- 
lie Cochrane (Tory) wanted to know something 
about the International Society, and, as usual, 
Mr. Gladstone "could not answer the question 
without notice " ; Lord C. J. Hamilton (Tor}^) in- 
dulged in a personal explanation ; lords came in 



158 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

and took their customary seats ; the Strangers' 
Gallery was filled, to overflowing ; among the di- 
plomatists I descried General WoodhuU and Mr. 
Moran, our good-natured and most efficient Secre- 
tary of Legation. I knew that General Schenck 
was somewhere in the House, ready to listen most 
intently. 

As the hour wore on, Sir Charles took the upper 
corner seat of his bench, which was occupied by 
James White, Auberon Herbert, W. M. Torrens, 
Sir Henry Hoare, Henry Fawcett, and one or two 
others. After the last question had been put, Sir 
Charles removed his hat, and rose to bring forward 
his motion on the Civil List. Then began the 
reign of pandemonium. Viscount Bury, a tall, 
florid man occupying a commanding seat, intro- 
duced an unexpected dramatic efl"ect by holding 
aloft a copy of the oath of allegiance, and wanting 
to know whether the honorable baronet, having 
declared himself a Eepublican, was not guilty of 
an infringement of a solemn vow. Auberon Her- 
bert rose to order, and cheers, followed by counter- 
cheers, rang through the House. The Speaker 
said Lord Bury was in possession of the House ; 
whereupon the irate lord wanted to know whether, 
before hearing the honorable member for Chelsea, 
he might not be called upon to repudiate or 



REPUBLICANISM IN PARLIAMENT. 159 

acknowledge his republican professions. As the 
Speaker understands his business, the noble lord 
was told that it is no part of the Speaker's duty 
to say what is or what is not consistent with the 
oath ', at which information the melodramatic lord 
sat down, and Sir Charles once more stood up, 
cheered at first by his friends, but those cheers 
w^ere soon drowned in a Niagara of groans pro- 
ceed ino- from the Conservative side. Such howl- 
ing I never heard out of a menagerie. I thought 
I was in a den of wild beasts ; it seemed as if the 
inhabitants of the Zodlogical Gardens had suddenly 
been let loose in the House of Commons. The 
victim for whose blood these wdld animals ap- 
peared to thirst, did not once expostulate nor 
even alter his position. He stood with his hands 
behind him and his body bent forward, — an atti- 
tude that seems to be characteristic, and, if so, is 
susceptible of improvement ; for a speaker is 
never so commanding as when his shoulders 
are thrown back and he makes use of every 
inch of his stature. As even Homer has been 
known to nod, and the " Zoo " to be hushed in 
silence, so the bullies finally ceased from howling, 
and Sir Charles was allowed to speak to a slow, 
rumbling accompaniment of voices that did not 
prevent his being heard. Sir Charles has a 



160 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

good voice and a distinct utterance, and when he 
has acquired the art of being colloquial — an art 
which is known to Mr. Gladstone, but which is 
generally ignored in this country — he will make a 
good speaker. 

The speech was nearly two hours long; it was 
statistical from beginning to end ; it was intended 
to be nothing else. The object Avas to crowd as 
many facts as possible into a certain amount of 
time. 

Not one irrelevant word, not one word about a 
republic. The Tories were sadly disappointed at 
the prosaic nature of the speech, and Sir Charles 
sat down, cheered by a minority of friends, howled 
at by the representatives of the "Zoo." All 
through his speech Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Lowe 
had been taking notes; and from the attack made 
upon Sir Charles by Mr. Lowe out of Parliament, 
and his intimation that he would dispose of the 
Chelsea member when brought face to face with 
him in the House, everybody supposed that the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer would be as good as 
his word; but he failed to realize fond expectations. 
Mr. Lowe kept his seat, and Mr. Gladstone rose to 
reply. Now, everybody here knows how tenderly 
Mr. Gladstone treated Sir Charles in his Greenwich 
address, delivered shortly after the Newcastle 



REPUBLICAMUM IN PARLIAMENT. 1^1 

bombshell. But Mr. Gladstone is an intellectual 
flea. You never know where to have him ; conse- 
quently it never surprises the initiated to see the 
Prime Minister indulge in somersaults. It was a 
singular spectacle to behold a Liberal Minister re- 
ceived by his own party with silence, and by the 
opposition with uproarious approbation. He had 
it all his own waj^, and took advantage of the hos- 
tility to Dilke. It is easy for a man like Gladstone 
to be sarcastic, to make telling hits, to denounce. 
It is for easier to be brilliant than to disprove 
facts; consequently, Mr. Gladstone indulged in 
the rhetoric of abuse. He tried to wither Sir 
Charles by calling him an " instructor of the peo- 
ple," which appellation excited derisive laughter 
from the Tory benches. In one instance, replying 
to a statement made by Sir Charles, he declared it 
to be "one of the most wanton errors into which 
a member of Parliament ever fell." But, apart 
from this insulting denial of a single charge, Mr. 
Gladstone in no sense answered Sir Charles Dilke. 
He parried with "glittering generalities." He 
paid a warm eulogy to the Queen, thus insinuating 
that Sir Charles's motion was a personal attack 
upon her Majesty. He declared that the motion 
was inseparably connected with the speech at New- 
castle, therefore should be opposed, and he sat down 



162 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

after earnestly trusting that the House would 
meet the motion with a negative voice. Of course, 
the House was only too ready to heed Mr. Glad- 
stone's invitation ; and when Auberon Herbert 
rose to second the motion, the wild animals roared 
more frightfully than ever. Standing like patience 
on a monument, the radical brother of the Earl of 
Carnarvon showed an amount of pluck that, com- 
bined with his well-merited popularity as a thor- 
ough gentleman and genial opponent, should have 
eiven him the ear of the House ; but Engiand is a 
free country, and therefore will not tolerate free 
speech. Having waited in vain for a cessation of 
hostilities, Mr. Herbert, much to the " Zoo's " dis- 
gust, hit upon a staccato delivery of his speech 
which rendered every word an interjection that 
was heard distinctly by the reporters. 1 ! (roar) 
shall ! (bellowing) remain ! (roar) on ! (divide) my ! 
(roar) feet ! (bellowing) until ! (divide) the ! (roar) 
honorable ! (roar) members ! (bellowing) go ! (roar) 
to ! (roar) dinner ! (divide) or ! (roar) go ! (roar) 
to ! (roar) bed ! (bellowing.) The Tower of Babel 
was repeated, confusion was worse confounded ; 
but through it all Herbert stood manfully to his 
guns, defending his friend against false accusa- 
tions. What could be done with such an oppo- 
nent 1 Suddenly the opposition, almost to a man, 



REPUBLICANISM IN PARLIAMENT. 1G3 

rose, and left tlie House, in the hope that their 
example would cause the House to be reduced to 
less than forty members, in which case there would 
not be a quorum. Those who remained continued 
to howl, and when Herbert declared himself to be 
in favor of a republican form of government, the 
"Zoo" howded furiously. One member said he 
did not think there were forty members present, and 
moved that the House be counted. Roars of 
laughter succeeded this sally of wit. Herbert sat 
down imtil the House was counted. There being 
more than forty present, he resumed; but only to 
be again and again subjected to the same inter- 
ruption. AVhen this stratagem ceased to be novel, 
Lord Cecil Hamilton, thinking to prevent Herbert's 
speech from being reported, suddenly called atten- 
tion to the fiict that there were strangers in the 
House, — which meant that all the galleries, even 
that of the reporters', were to be cleared. It is a 
fiction that nobody assists at Parliamentary de- 
bates ; but if any one member chooses to see 
spectators, they are ordered out without a vote. 
We women, being behind a grating, were not dis- 
turbed, and for the first time I saw an advantage 
in the coop devoted to our sex. Sitting down un- 
til the last stranger had turned his reluctant back 
upon the House, Herbert once more returned to 



164 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

the charge, interrupted, however, with calls to 
" Divide," cries of " Question," screams of '' Go to 
bed," " Put on your nightcap," cat-calls and cock- 
crowings. Had sounds from the dunghill been 
supplemented by the brayings of the ass, the con- 
cert would have been perfect. I saw little attempt 
by the Speaker to keep order. When Mr. Dodson 
rose and asked whether crowing was in order, the 
Speaker made bold to say that never had he wit- 
nessed a scene that had given him such pain. Mr. 
Dillwyn moved an adjournment, on the ground 
that reporters were not present. This led to a 
division, twenty-three being in favor of adjourn- 
ment and two hundred and thirty-eight against ; 
but the motion had the effect of readmitting both 
strangers and reporters. Sir Charles replied to 
certain statements made by Mr. Gladstone, main- 
tained that no portion of the statement on which 
he rested his case had been disproved by the 
Prime Minister, adhered to that statement, and 
proposed to go to a division, however few members 
might vote for him. The yeas and nays were 
taken. " The nays have it," said the Speaker. 
"The yeas have it," said Sir Charles. "The nays 
have it," repeated the Speaker. " The yeas have 
it," replied Sir Charles; and thus the division was 
forced. No one was surprised when the House 
returned and the vote was read : — 



REPUBLICANISM IN PARLIAMENT. 165 

For Sir C. Dilke's motion . . .2 
Against 276 



Majority 274 

But it was an overthrow worth many victories. 
The charges made by Sir Charles were not dis- 
proved ; the right of free speech was denied by 
Parliament ; investigation w^as voted down. Mr. 
Liddell hoped that the scene might be forgotten. 
The people will not forget the slightest incident. 
They will remember the 19th of March longer than 
will suit the convenience of ministerial memories, 
and Republicans will have reason to believe that 
" whom the gods wish to destroy they first make 
mad." 




AN AFTER-DINNER SPEECH. 



TOAST : "THE LADIES." 




HEN one of England's most distinguished 
phj^sicians first urged me to return thanks 
for the toast last given, I declined. I 
never had done such a thing, and thought that I 
never could. Then I remembered that to the 
skillful treatment of this same physician I owed 
the restoration of that "most excellent thing in 
woman," a voice, which, if not " low " at present, 
will be shortly ; and it seemed ungrateful not to 
make some slight return for so signal a service. 
The claim was none the less valid for being in- 
direct ; and as this is the age of revolution, as 
humanity is stronger than caste or sex, as Royalty 
shakes hands with Democracy by acknowledging 
allegiance to the republic of letters, I asked my- 
self why, after all, women should not be heard as 
well as seen at public dinners. It is true that an 
august body of men — of course I can mean none 



AN AFTER-DINNER SPEECH. 167 

other than the House of Commons — quote St. 
Paul as though saints were their perennial guides, 
philosophers, and friends ; and declare that women 
should keep silence, conveniently forgetting that 
St. Paul is addressing the women of Corinth, ac- 
cording to the law of A. D. 59 ; that elsewhere he 
contradicts himself ; and that the proper reading 
is, '' Let your women keep silence in the churches." 
If honorable M. P.'s persist in proving their inti- 
mate acquaintance with Scripture by misquoting 
it when they desire to keep lovely woman in her 
proper sphere, they should first descry strangers 
in the ladies' gallery, and order their summary 
ejection. But now, although at this post-prandial 
hour we are all supposed to be incapable of reason- 
ing, let us try to be logical. Women sing in public, 
act in public, read in public; why, then, should they 
not speak ? Why should it be considered feminine 
for a woman to interpret Shakespeare's ideas, and 
unfeminine to interpret her own, — provided she 
has any 1 It seems to me that if pubhc speaking 
be tolerated at all, — which is doubtful, especially 
at dinners, — it should be from the lips of women, 
and for this reason. Ever since the subsidence of 
chaos, men have been talking. For six thousand 
years, at least, they have, to use an Americanism, 
'' stumped " creation, and impressed the world with 



168 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

their views on all subjects ; but as there is as 
much sex in mind as there is in matter, we have 
seen everything in profile. Now, an artist will 
tell you that no two sides of the same face are 
exactly alike. I pray you, therefore, let us have 
the other profile, whereby w^e may see the entire 
face, gaze into telltale eyes, and thus get at the 
soul of all things. Taking for granted all that is 
known and said about women, they ought to make 
more attractive speakers than men. I do not 
think they are, so far ; but they ought to be, and 
these are my data. Women are born more grace- 
ful ; they have the great gift of beauty and the 
great privilege of dress. Hence, they are a greater 
gratification to the eye, and the majority of people 
hear with their eyes. Women are more impulsive, 
more sympathetic, more persuasive ; therefore are 
they more likely to touch the heart ; and when 
you have made an audience feel, half the battle is 
won. Pray, who does the greater part of speaking 
in private, — Mr, or Mrs. Caudle 1 Were I a man, 
I should hail public speaking as a blessing in dis- 
guise. When Vesuvius is in a state of eruption, 
^tna is quiet. Fluency of diction is a desideratum 
in speaking. If tradition be correct, w^omen are 
not lacking in this requirement. Indeed, it has 
been seriously questioned whether women partake 



AiV AFTER-DINNER SPEECH. 169 

of celestial joys, for the reason that once upon a 
time there was silence in heaven for the space of 
half an hour. Then, if precedent be required, 
women can trace back their rights in this respect 
much further than men, for Eve was the original 
orator. It is to her persuasive pleading that we 
owe all knowledge. Miriam was among the first 
to prophesy ; Deborah was elevated to the dignity 
of judge of Israel; Greek oracles proceeded from 
the lips of women ; and the greatest orators of 
Hellas did not scorn to be taught their art by 
the sex they regarded wdth contempt. Socrates 
learned rhetoric from Aspnsia ; and it w\as to their 
mother, Cornelia, that the Gracchi owed their elo- 
quence. And, if modern examples are asked for, 
I can only reply, that not many evenings since I 
heard six Englishwomen — the majority of them 
young, and two of them very pretty — speak at 
Hanover Square Rooms in a manner that might be 
imitated w^ith advantage by the gentlemen in the 
House of Commons, who recently referred to them 
as creatures of sentiment. If it be allowed, then, 
that women ma^^ speak in public, it seems to me 
no more than just that one of my sex should re- 
turn hearty thanks to the managing committee of 
this dinner, for treating them as though they were 
not too good for human nature's daily food. It 



^ 



170 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

is useless to talk of the equality of the sexes, so 
long as men sit down to turtle soup in one room, 
and women stand up to tea and sandwiches in an- 
other, waiting with becoming humility for admis- 
sion to a Barmecide feast of reason and flow of 
soul. I never knew a woman who did not protest 
against a senseless custom which deprives public 
dinners of half their utility as well as all their bril- 
liancy ; for, as the object of these dinners is the 
raising of money, their managers show little dis- 
cernment in ignoring sisters of charity, who, in my 
country, are as effective in opening the purses 
as they are in touching the hearts of their lay 
brothers. 

In conclusion, therefore, and in the name of the 
ladies, I thank you for the cordial manner in which 
the toast has been proposed and received, and 
trust that the managing committee may never 
regret having recognized women as creatures with 
appetites. 

Festival of the London Hospital for Throat Diseases, 
Willis's Rooms, May, 1872. 




SPECIMEN AMERICANS. 




Ems, June 17, 1872. 
AM asked to do what is an intolerable 
bore. I am asked to sketch my European 
experiences at a season of the year when 
the very word " experiences " sends one's mental 
thermometer to fever heat, and from the hottest 
place in Germany, where writing is not only im- 
possible, but strictly prohibited by the medical 
faculty. Is this Christian^ Is this doing unto 
others as one would wish to be done by ] Were I 
not a little lower than the angels, I should answer 
as briefly and as obstinately as his Holiness the 
Pope, — Non possumus ; but being not only an 
angel but a woman (''and therefore incapable of 
saying 'no,'" asserts public opinion), I promise, 
while attempting to gratify an inhuman request, 
to be as inconsequent as Mrs. Nickleby, as stupid 
as Mrs. Raddles's girl Betsy, as sleepy as the fat 
boy Joe, and as unintelligible as Flora in " Little 
Dorrit." Like the once famous President of the 



172 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

once Confederate States, "all I ask is to be let 
alone " ; and if a hapless being is roused in her 
sleepy lair at Ems, the consequences of an act 
unparalleled in its rashness must be assumed. 
No one is capable of an idea in this sleepy hollow. 
Had Eip Yan Winkle gone to sleep here, he never 
would have waked. If in the dim past you ever 
had an idea, you forget it on arriving, and help- 
lessly turn your brain out to grass as of no fur- 
ther use. 
I I am requested to say something about Amer- 
' icans abroad. Well, I -am sorry to make the con- 
fession, but either there are a great many fools in 
America, or all the fools in America visit Europe. 
I have not yet arrived at a definite conclusion on 
the subject, for truth is said to lie in a well, and a 
great deal of rope is required to get at it ; but 
judging from the fact that I never met such pecu- 
liar specimens at home as I meet or hear of 
abroad, I am inclined to believe that a large pro- 
portion of our idiots seek an asylum on this side 
of the Atlantic. Perhaps this is the retort cour- 
teous we make to Europe for sending us her ad- 
venturers, thieves, and burglars. If this be so, 
Europe has a decided advantage, for whereas her 
exports steal our property and tarnish our good 
name, the American exports give an impetus to 



SPECIMEN AMERICANS. 173 

trade by throwing away their own money in a 
manner that would astonish Croesus. Travelling 
on the Continent is rendered wellnigh insufferable 
on account of a folly that has thoroughly cor- 
rupted innkeepers, servants, and tradesmen. The 
mischief, begun years ago by the English, has been 
aggravated to a pitch beyond w^hich human en- 
durance, to say nothing of mortal pockets, can no 
farther go. Strangely enough, petroleum and our 
terrible civil war are the principal causes of this 
growing evil. All the " shoddy," all the nouveaux 
riches, rush to Europe for the purpose of spending 
their rapidly acquired and frequently ill-gotten 
fortunes, and, stupidly imagining that fine feathers 
make fine birds, indulge in the wildest extravagance, 
to the intense satisfaction of trade and the disgTist of 
disinterested common-sense. Speak English upon 
entering a sho]D on the Continent, and prices are 
increased one third. Let it be known that you 
are American, and they are doubled. Not long 
since I priced a trinket, and, speaking French, was 
supposed by the illiterate shopkeeper to be a 
European. Returning the next day with the de- 
termination of purchasing the bawble on account 
of its cheapness, I found a Frenchman examining 
it, evidently with intent to buy. Observing that 
I was about to withdraw, the Frenchman raised 



174 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

his hat, and, making a profound bow, declared 
that he did not intend to purchase, adding, 
" Madame est Americaine. C'est le pays des 
richesses et des jolies femmes " ; after which gen- 
teel impertinence he retired, and the shopkeeper, 
forgetting that he had seen me before, doubled 
the price of the desired article ! " The people of 
the Continent are very fond of you Americans, be- 
cause, you see, you are all rich," said an English- 
woman to me in a railway carriage. It was useless 
to deny the soft impeachment, as, not unlike some 
of her countrymen and women, she had arrived at 
certain conclusions, and no mortal argument could 
induce her to depart from them. This opinion is 
not without foundation ; for what think you of a 
man who, upon having bills presented to him, no 
matter by whom, extends a handful of gold and 
requests his creditors to help themselves? This 
is done over and over again. The folly of a few 
is the curse of many. Fancy an American girl 
with one hundred dresses, an allowance of two 
hundred francs a month for bonbons, and bills for 
gloves amounting to hundreds of francs ! So con- 
vinced are Europeans of our inexhaustible wealth, 
that noblemen see in American girls heiresses 
from whom to obtain the means of repairing for- 
tunes shattered by dissipation or gradual decay. 



SPECIMEN AMERICANS. 175 

They offer titles for gold, believing that no repub- 
lican woman can resist a coronet. It would be 
funny, were it not disgusting, to note how, in a 
garrison town like Vienna, aristocratic officers in 
search of large incomes flock about Americans, as 
bees buzz about flowers from which they hope to 
extract honey. That certain girls have sold them- 
selves for titles is not strange when their previous 
lives are scrutinized, as, in most instances, they 
have been educated in French convents, and are 
no more American than the Parisians themselves. 
Nevertheless, it is sad that such things should be. 
From these examples the cynic turns upon you, 
saying, *' Look at your republican virtue ! Look 
at your contempt for rank ! " forgetting the mil- 
lions of real Americans in the backslidings of a 
minority. According to my theory — and prac- 
tice — no American should seek introduction to 
European courts. If he be a true republican he 
must disbelieve in the principle of caste, and, 
therefore, should not go where he is not received 
upon terms of equality. If Americans are pre- 
sented at court and do exhibit a weakness for 
rank, they are hypocrites, and deserve to be de- 
spised by Europeans as the worst of flunkies. A 
people who do not live up to their professions of 
faith merit the contempt of the world. 



176 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

The great mistake made by Europeans is judg- 
ing Americans by themselves. Here "wealth is 
confined for the most part to tlie aristocracy, con- 
sequently those who travel represent a much 
higher average of social culture than is likely to 
be found among a corresponding number of 
Americans. The vulgar and illiterate of other 
nations — unless a percentage of well-to-do Eng- 
lish be excepted — are poor, and remain at home. 
The same class of people among us are often the 
richest, and are therefore much more largely 
represented abroad than our aristocracy of intel- 
lect and breeding. In fact, the best Americans 
can rarely afford to make a journey which is 
yearly becoming more and more expensive, and 
which demands an amount of time that workers 
are not able to give. When I tell English people 
that the most brilliant women I know never leave 
their quiet New England homes, they exclaim, 
" Why, I thought all Americans travelled ! " As 
a nation we do travel more than any other, but 
the proportion of culture is less than among 
European travellers. Foreigners make no such 
nice distinctions. A hotel on the Continent will 
shelter, at one time during the season, a dozen 
Americans, six English, three Kussians, two 
French, and one Prussian. The Russians, Prus- 



SPECfMEN AMERICANS. 177 

sians, and FroDcli almost invariably belong to the 
nobility, and generally inherit good breeding, if 
they do not brains. Most of the English belong 
to the aristocracy or gentry ; while probably nine 
out of the dozen Americans are persons of no 
distinction whatever. The European observer, 
especially if he be English, picks out the least 
attractive of our people, and then and there con- 
cludes that Americans arc the vulgarest and most 
ostentatious of people. There never was a more 
i unjust criticism. Take the same class in any 
I other country, — exclusive of France and Italy, 
1 where good breeding is as common to the servant 

/as to the master, — and the Americans will be 
immeasurably superior, for the reason that we 
L— ^re more versatile, have seen more of the world, 
can more readily adapt ourselves to surroundings, 
— either good or bad, — and, owing to universal 
education, have a far higher average of intelli- 
gence. After all, the marvel is, not that there are 
so many uncouth Americans, but that there are 
so few. The greatest proof of our superiority is 
that the roughest man will not be lacking in the 
greatest essential of civilization, — respect for 
women. The breeding of the Latin races is, as a 
rule, skin deep. "Your men must be very 
chivalrous," said a clever Englishman, the other 

8* L 



178 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

day. " I happened to be walking recently in a 
German town during a heavy rain, when a gentle- 
man and lady, without an umbrella, approached 
an omnibus that was about to start. Seeing 
every seat occupied, the gentleman, who spoke 
German perfectly and who was undoubtedly of 
Teutonic origin, asked whether any one would 
kindly give up his seat to a lady. No one re- 
plied, no one moved. ' Well,' exclaimed the Ger- 
man, walking off indignantly, 'it is very evident 
that there is no American among you.' He has 
either travelled or lived in America," said the 
Englishman. " Or married an American woman," 
I sue-grested. That American men should extend 
civilities in public conveyances and elsewhere to 
unknown women strikes Europeans either as the 
height of gallantry or the height of absurdity. 
It depends upon the individual's estimate of 
women. 




HEAT AND IMPUDENCE. 




Ems, June 20, 1872. 
N my previous letter I spoke of being 
sleepy ; at this present moment I am 
both sleepy and warm, and long for a 
return to the original costume worn before that 
fall which has resulted unpleasantly in so many 
ways, obliging us to know something, for example, 
whether it agrees with us or not, and forcing us 
Avomen quite out of our wits, at least twice a year, 
in our search for clothes. What bliss Heaven will 
be ! There, according to painters, fashions are as 
everlasting as eternity ; and if we are among the 
select few, who, like Raphael's angels, finish be- 
hind the ears, we shall be bothered with nothing 
but a pair of wings. However, on the whole, I 'd 
rather there were a little more of me. I 've a 
w^eakness for drapery ; and it would be a great bore 
to wrap one's self up in one's dignity, with noth- 
ing but intellect to fall back upon. Then I 'm 
fond of singing ; and how horrible to have an ear 



180 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

for music with no possible means of cultivating 
it ! with so much spare time, I mean spare eter- 
nity, too ! 

I. remarked that I was warm. I am, and all the 
mind I possess, that • has not become gelatinous, 
dwells fondly upon one of Sydney Smith's clever 
sayings. By the way, now^ that he and Tom Hood 
and Douglas Jerrold are dead, nobody in England 
says anything witty. " Yery high and low tem- 
perature," declares Sydney Smith, " extinguishes 
all human sympathy and relations. It is impos- 
sible to feel affection beyond seventy-eight degrees 
or below twenty degrees of Fahrenheit ; human 
nature is too solid or too liquid beyond these 
limits. Man only lives to shiver or perspire." At 
present I am too liquid to feel. My only sympa- 
thy is with the brilliant Englishman, w^ho, writing 
from the House of Commons, in an atmosphere 
scorchingly hot and laden with the shattered 
remains of a murdered Ballot Bill says, " I am so 
sick of the links and fetters of civilized life that it 
would be unsafe to trust myself to the chalybeate 
pools of a German Sylvan. It would be dangerous 
to — disrobe, for I should simply take to the 
wooded mountains, and reassert the original dig- 
nity and freedom of savage life ! " What must be 
the temperature of London, when a sober English- 



HEAT AND IMPUDENCE. 181 

man waxes desperate 1 Misfortunes never come 
singly. I 've added to the horrors of my situation 
by upsetting a full bottle of ink on an immaculate 
floor! What this means in the bill I shudder — 
no, I can't shudder — I perspire to think. I 've 
washed it up with my best handkerchief, but the 
" damned spot " will not " out," and, like the stain 
on Bluebeard's key, must a fearful tale unfold. 

"But about Americans abroad." Well, in 
preaching a sermon it is useless to praise the 
saints. One must abuse the sinners in order to 
draw a moral. This is what sinners were made 
for, and by the same token, sinners must be the 
burden of my letter. " Plus on aime moins on 
juge,^^ declares Balzac ; and though Balzac has told 
many fearful truths, it seems to me that this is 
but a half-truth, many lovers and all critics judg- 
ing most severely where they are most interested. 
If I did not sincerely love America, the actions of 
its people would be as indifferent to me as those 
of other countries ; it is because I desire to see 
our Republic as much respected abroad as it de- 
serves, that I am keenly alive to all shortcomings. 
When a Frenchman glares impudently at a woman, 
Ljor a German swallows both knife and fork in the 
process of eating, or an Englishman bullies his infe- 
riors, and is " umble " in the presence of those 



182 AMERICANS ABE AD. 

above him in rank, I am disgusted, but not per- 
sonally concerned. Let an American give offence, 
and I feel in a measure responsible for his conduct ; 
for remember that our nation is a child, in fact 
is but just born, and in European opinion is on 
trial. As the prevailing governments of the Old 
World are more or less despotic and thoroughly 
aristocratic, they look with no love upon a repub- 
lic whose success is a menace to divine right and 
the degrading spirit of caste. Singularly ignorant 
of all that concerns us, not thinking it worth while 
to study either people or institutions, all their tra- 
ditions and prejudices are against ns, and they are 
only too happy when individual examples confirm 
previous conclusions. Therefore it is important 
that Americans abroad should honorably represent 
their country. Each man and woman is a bit of 
the Republic, is scanned and discussed as such, 
condemned or praised as such. European radicals, 
anxious for the coming of the universal republic, 
look to us for practical evidence of what they so 
earnestly and unselfishly preach. They grow 
faint-hearted upon finding folly and vice combined 
with a total indifference to the propagation of the 
form of government which the most advanced 
minds believe to be best for humanity. If 
Americans abroad fully realized their influence, 



HEAT AND IMPUDENCE. 183 

either for good or evil, there would be much less 
cause for adverse criticism than there is at present. 
Many come over for the purpose of what is ele- 
gantly termed " a spree." Out-Frenchifying fast- 
Parisians, they do everything that public opinion 
restrains them from doing at home, and, returning 
to America accomplished in little but vice, graft 
French manners on republican principles, with bad 
results to the tree of liberty. Bear in mind that I 
am dealing with our sinners, not our many saints. 
The men go all lengths ; the women go as far 
as they dare, sometimes farther. Paris is the 
chosen rendezvous, not because of a bright sun 
and many works of art, but because vice and folly 
need not be sought. They come without bidding, 
and stay by you as long as there is a franc left in 
your pocket. 

And the flattery one is obliged to endure in 
Paris ! It must avail, otherwise it would not be 
universal. When I think that Americans receive 
it not only with toleration but pleasure, I wonder 
what has come over the people since the landing 
of the Pilgrims. If a Frenchwoman smiles, and 
compliments Monsieur on the shape of his hand, 
Monsieur is so charmed with her bright eyes and 
pretty lies as to pay any amount she chooses to 
ask for the gloves. The amount of whipped sylla- 



184 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

bub administered to us women is positively ap- 
palling ! If you try on boots you are overpowered 
with eulogies over your 2^^^^^ pied. The more 
3^ou don't like the boot, and the more the shop- 
keeper wants to get rid of it, the smaller and 
more beautiful is your jjetit pied. Listen to the 
following dialogue between myself and a boot- 
maker : — 

" I do not like the boot. It does not fit." 

" Mais, pardon, madame, it exactly suits your 
little foot." 

" It does nothing of the sort. It is too long and 
narrow." 

" On the contrary, madame, I assure you that 
nothing could be better. Perhaps it is a trifle 
long, but your foot is so little that — " 

" I repeat that the boot is too long and narrow%" 

"Pardon, madame, but if you observe closely 
yon will see that your little foot — " 

" Let me hear no more nonsense about my little 
foot, which is n't little. You know perfectly well 
that the boot does not fit ; and unless you show 
me another pair I shall go without any." 

" Bieiij madame, on the whole you are right. I 
think that the only way to fit you properly is to 
take your measure." 

And this change of base is made, without a 



HEAT AND IMPUDENCE. 185 

blush, in the coolest possible manner ! The man 
lied as long as he could, and, when he found it 
impossible to get rid of the ready-made boots, told 
the truth. This is my experience in everything. 
Send for a woman who deals in lingerie, and 
before showing you what 3'ou desire, she will 
exhibit Valenciennes dresses for one thousand 
francs, you knowing that, if beaten down with infi- 
nite labor, she will take six hundred. " But the 
collars," you say, impatiently. " In one moment, 
madame. Here is a lovely fichu." '' Not to-day. 
The collars." " Will madame please cast her eye 
over this exquisite bit of lace % " " The collars," 
" Pardon, madame ; but gaze upon these beauti- 
fully embroidered handkerchiefs," And so you 
will be politely bullied into examining everything 
that you do not want or ought not to buy. Find- 
ing it useless to display her wares, the woman at 
last produces the collars, which are not ]3retty 
and are not w^hat you want. She employs much 
rhetoric to make you believe that never were there 
such beautiful collars, nor collars so becoming. 
Remain obdurate, and the wretched creature at 
last says, " There are moments when my selection 
of collars is not very good ; this is one of them. 
When madame returns I promise to suit her 
exactly, for now I see what she requires ! " Again 



186 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

not a blush, and the woman leaves with a smile 
and a bland honjour. There are people who, if 
not fooled into buying, receive the lies with per- 
fect equanimity. It may be unamiable, but I 
cannot ; and I believe that fewer Americans would 
be cheated if more resented the attempts in this 
direction. 

Then when it comes to dressmakers, no words 
can describe the acting that takes place. If 
you possess good points, they are descanted upon 
in all their length, breadth, and thickness. 
If you possess none, they are invented. You 
are a model for a sculptor ; you are distinguee 
beyond princesses ; you have eyes beaming with 
intelligence 3 you are so spirituelle as, from 
sympathy, to furnish wit to all with whom you 
come in contact ; you are, you are, you are — 
until you feel like presenting a pistol at their long 
heads, and exclaiming, " Dead silence or your dead 
bodies ! " But, as I remarked before, it answers 
admirably as a rule. I 've seen women accept this 
adulation with delight, and as a consequence order 
dresses they did not want and at which their hus- 
bands growled. Human nature is excessively frail, 
particularly when it comes to Paris. There all 
3^our weaknesses break out, and, like the measles, 
come to the surface. Many saints would be full- 



HEAT AND IMPUDENCE. 187 

grown sinners if they only had the opportunity 
that Paris affords for the development of latent 
cajmcities. 

To return to dressmakers. Americans ruin them 
by paying fabulous amounts. Because clothes at 
the highest prices are not, on acount of the tariff, 
as expensive as at home, American women rarely 
dispute a bill, and iire laughed at by the very per- 
sons who realize enormous profits from their folly. 
For six perfectly plain underwaists, worth at the 
most six francs apiece, and for two similar waists 
trimmed with lace, worth fifteen francs apiece, I 
was recently charged by a fashionable modiste one 
hundred and forty francs ! On looking at the bill 
I murmured, then counted out the money, and 
was about to pay it when I concluded to express 
my indignation, and note the result. It was 
received with perfect composure, as though in no 
way surprising. " I shall not pay this outrageous 
bill," I declared. " Very well," quietly rejoined the 
enemy ; " when madame returns she will make 
some arrangement." Is not this dishonesty enough 
to spoil Anglo-Saxon tempers 1 It is quite time 
for me to return to America. I can't make mat- 
ters better, and they make me much worse. But 
fancy fighting my battles o'er again in the present 
state of the thermometer ! Into what apoplec- 
tic dangers have I rushed ! 



SOUR GRAPES AND SNOBBERY. 




Ems, June 25, 1872. 
DO not know what is the matter with the 
seasons, but they seem to be about as 
undecided in their action as the Demo- 
cratic party with regard to a Presidential choice. 
Three days ago we were simmering in the heat of 
a midsummer sun ; now we are going about in 
thick boots, winter clothing, and waterproofs, with 
an umbrella in one hand and a glass of lukewarm 
water in the other, contemplating perpetual show- 
ers, feeling quite as damp outside as we are inside, 
and listening to dejected strains of music, that, 
under the circumstances, may be called liquid. Is 
not such a condition of things unpardonable *? 
We come to the warmest springs in Germany, 
making up our minds to be broiled on St. Law- 
rence's gridiron if necessary, when, lo ! Nature 
gives us the cold shoulder, and throws a wet 
blanket over us ! Talk of the fickleness and in- 



SOUR GRAPES AND SNOBBERY. 189 

consistency of man ! Talk of our going to the 
book of Nature for inspiration ! Wliat do we 
read there but the most glaring inaccuracies, made, 
apparently, from sheer love of mischief? Having 
set down laws for the ruling of the world, she 
deliberately breaks them, and leaves us poor mor- 
tals in a mental chaos. She tells the grain and 
the grapes that at this season of the year the sun 
shall shine its brightest ; then, covering' his round 
face with a thick veil, she betakes herself to weep- 
ing and wailing, like the coquettish siren that she 
is. There is no such thing as climate. Countries 
have a good deal of weather, such as it is, but 
climate exists nowhere except by flashes; and if 
ever you leave home in the fond hope of attaining 
the unattainable, you will get — what you de- 
serve. The only contented people stalking about 
are the English, one of whom was heard to observe 
that the constant rain reminded him of home. He 
carries his umbrella with the air of one having au- 
thority, as if to say, "What I do not know about 
rain is not worth knowing." " And you, are you 
conventional ? " asks Mrs. Campion's adorer in 
" Lothair." " I live only for climate and the 
affections," replies the lady. Was there ever a 
more horrible sarcasm than this of Disraeli's % To 
live onl}^ for the two things one never realizes ! 



190 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

" Never," do you say 1 Yes, never ; and to prove 
the statement, take the report of those who best 
know this favored region of the Rhine. They 
will tell you that out of every ten years two only 
are expected to produce fine vintages. Wines 
have increased in value, and the poor drink what 
by any other name would be more sour. When 
it comes to the affections, are they not a failure 
quite as often as Rhine wines % There are vintages 
of sour grapes unrecorded in the annals of the 
wine trade. The world is made up of three sorts 
of people : those who are disappointed in climate, 
those who are disappointed in love, and those who 
are disappointed in both, — a mild form of the last 
being an epidemic. 

Rain reminds rae of England ; England recalls 
snobs ; and snobs bring me back to our old subject 
of Americans abroad j for in this letter I shall 
deal with snobs. But before I forget, let me tell 
you of four j^oung men whom I never saw, but, as 
they occupied rooms adjoining mine in a hotel, 
and as the door between was an excellent con- 
ductor of sound, I could not avoid overhearing 
their remarks. I assume that they were young, 
because the vapid conversation suggested veal. 
For two weeks this 'parti carree played euchre 
every night till the small hours, and very fre- 



SOUR GRAPES AND SNOBBERY. 191 

queiitlv daring the day. The gambling was mild, 
and the wildest imagination could not conceive 
where lay the fascination of the game when Paris 
with its myriad attractions stood outside ; bnt as 
it takes all sorts of people to make up the world, 
I suppose these young men nobly fulfil their mis- 
sion. On the last night of their stay they awaked 
to the fact that they had seen nothing of Paris. 
"What shall we say when we get home]" asked 
one. " Well, I 've seen the Louvre," replied No. 
2. " So have I," said No. 3. " I 've seen the 
Triumphal Arch, " said No. 4. "So have I, " 
chimed in No. 1. "You two can swell on the 
Louvre, and we two can blow on the Arch." Of 
course, this is incredible, but it is true. What a 
charming spectacle it will be for the friends of 
these intelligent young men to assist at the novel 
performance of swelling and blowing ! Why they 
came to Europe I cannot imagine, unless they 
were clerks sent over to make purchases for their 
employers. 

The only snobs in the world are English and 
American. The word is purely English, and has 
been adopted by us to supply a limited demand. 
That such monstrosities as snobs should arise in a 
republic is the penalty we pay for being Anglo- 
Saxon. W^ith Anglo-Saxon virtues we inherit 



192 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

Anglo-Saxon vices, that break out in degenerate 
specimens of the American race. Where there is 
an oligarchy, as in England, and where trade is 
despised as the mipardonable sin, — unless it be 
rich enough to retire and marry into the nobil- 
ity, — of course there must be snobs as long as 
human nature is weak enough to desire to be 
grander than it is. But with us, snobbery is sub- 
limely ridiculous. When I see men and women 
who never had any grandfathers, — at least none 
worth speaking of, — who rose from nothing, and 
whose elevation is due to the institutions of our 
country, — when, I repeat, I see such people going 
about Europe abusing the generous hand that has 
uplifted them, declaring that there is too much 
liberty in America, that the people (pray who are 
they but the people'?) should be taught their 
place, that we need a strong government (like 
Napoleon's), and that America will not be a fit 
residence for ladies and gentlemen until we have 
it, I think of serpents warmed into life only to 
sting their benefactor. Treachery more foul is not 
conceivable ; yet there are quite a number of such 
traitors, — so many as to have often been quoted 
by foreigners in proof of the rottenness of democ- 
racy; so many as to have caused Sir Cherries 
Dilke, in his admirable book of travels called 



SOUR GRAPES AND SNOBBERY. 103 

"Greater Britain,"' to make them the subject of an 
excoriating paragraph. " Many American men 
and women," he saj's, " who have too httle nobihty 
of soul to be patriots, and too little understanding 
to see that theirs is already, in many points, the 
master country of the globe, come to you and be- 
wail the fate which has caused them to be born 
citizens of a republic, and dwellers in a country 
where men call vices by their names. The least 
educated of their countrymen, the only grossly 
vulgar class that America brings forth, they fly 
to Europe 'to escape democracy' and pass their 
lives in Paris, Pau, or Nice, living libels on the 
country they are believed to represent." These 
are the Americans wdio were Louis Napoleon's 
warmest partisans. An adventurer himself, Na- 
poleon received all Americans who could open his 
court doors with a golden key. Whether they 
spoke good English or bad, whether they were 
knaves or fools, made little difference to the hero 
of Sedan, so long as they spent money in Paris, 
and displayed beauty and toilets at the Tuil- 
eries. " I would give half my fortune to see 
Louis back on the throne of France," said an 
American woman, not long ago, calling the ex- 
Emperor " Louis " in order to prove her intimacy. 
This style of American is so frequently found 
9 M 



194 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

living abroad, that I was more grieved than sur- 
prised when a French repubhcan said to me 
recently, "You are the only American rejDublican 
I ever met." " How many Americans have you 
met?" "A dozen." These libels cannot exist in 
America because they are libels ; and certainly wo 
are well rid of them and their offspring, who are 
apt to possess the vices of both hemispheres and 
the virtues of neither. " European Americans are 
a bad lot," exclaimed an Oxford professor not long 
since. " They do neither you nor me any credit.'' 
" When an American comes to us from the United 
States," said a Cambridge man shortly after, " he 
is likely to be a good fellow and clever ; but when 
he comes from Europe he is a poor creature and 
generally a snob ; he tries to pass for an English- 
man ; and one man was awfully cut up the other 
day when I told him that I knew him to be an 
American by his accent. He was trying to talk 
cockney ! " 

If these Transatlantic snobs only knew how 
they are despised by all whose opinion is worth 
having ! They are despised by the very persons 
who repeat their remarks derogatory to the United 
States ; for Europeans know the difference between 
gold and pinchbeck, and England has no toleration 
for republican flunkies. " I wish you 'd write 



SOUR GRAPES AND SNOBBERY. 195 

about a certain set of your country people who 
come to England and court our aristocracy," said a 
clever Englishman last winter. " They make them- 
selves very contemptible, never deigning to men- 
tion any one who has not a handle to his name, 
always informing you of the grand houses to which 
they are invited, and taking good care to display 
cards upon which there are coronets. They im- 
mediately put their servants in livery, and get up 
coats of arms with mottoes in Latin, — a language 
that half of them do not understand. There 
have been American Ministers here Avho were 
snobs of the first quality." Think of being told 
this, not by one person, but by many ! Elsewhere 
I have heard similar complaints of the snobbish- 
ness of American officials abroad. This is intol- 
erable and not to be endured. No citizen should 
receive an appointment abroad who is not a 
radical democrat and proof against rank, the 
slightest evidence of snobbishness being sufficient 
cause for removal from office. What private indi- 
viduals do concerns themselves, but what officials 
do concerns the nation. 

On the whole, the women are greater fools than 
the men in this worship of rank, which is rank 
worship, for the reason, perhaps, that women are 
more given to kneeling. Prudhomme, I believe, 



196 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

has said, ^^ Les grands ne nous 2^cLraissent grands 
que iKirceque nous sommes a genouxP " I became 
quite disgusted with the girls on our steamer," 
confessed a young American who crossed the 
Atlantic in a month that shall be nameless. 
"There happened to be on board the son of an 
English baronet ; and though he was an ordinary 
fellow, not half as nice as some of us, the girls 
vied with one another in attracting his attention, 
leaving us out in the cold." This is a fine return 
for the respect and devotion of American men ; 
always excepting advanced, liberal Englishmen, 
there are no men in the world for whom our 
women should entertain such regard as for Ameri- 
cans. Here, on the Continent, women are con- 
sidered inferiors and regard themselves in that 
light ; in Germany, they are domestic animals 
and drudges ; among the Latin races they are in- 
tended to minister to man's pleasure, nothing 
more. It is only the exceptional Frenchman or 
Italian who believes in the virtue of woman ; yet 
there are American girls who prefer foreign men 
to our own, and, knowing, if they choose to thiuk, 
that no Frenchman and few Englishmen would 
marry a poor American girl, actually tie them- 
selves for life to men whose views in regard to 
women ought to be thoroughly a^evolting. And 



SOUR GRAPES AND SNOBBERY. 197 

by marrying foreigners, they actually give up 
American citizenship ! It is outrageous, and the 
law ought to be changed. Still, if an American 
woman will be insane enough to marry a Euro- 
pean, perhaps it is well that she should take the 
consequences. 

There is another class of our people as rabidly 
pro-American as the other is anti-American. 
Everything is wrong on this side of the water. 
We are altogether perfect ; the rest of creation has 
nothing to teach us. No people but ourselves are 
fit for a republic. The French are all mad, and 
Louis Napoleon was good enough for them ; they 
are thoroughly corrupt and ought to be exter- 
minated. The art of Europe is unattractive. No 
scenery is equal to our own. Of the two ex- 
tremes, the latter is preferable, because it is com- 
patible with manliness ; but both are bad enough. 
Europe can teach us much if we are sufficiently 
intelligent to learn ; but neither the snob nor the 
spread-eagle American is likely to benefit his 
country by the observations he makes on the in- 
stitutions of the Old World. The sooner both 
types are educated off the surface of the earth, the 
better for the Republic. 

Of the many hundreds of thoughtful' men and 
women I say nothing, because saints, like good 
wine, need no bush. 



THE GLORIOUS FOURTH AND SO FORTH. 




Ems, July 6, 1872. 
N my last letter I pictured to a syrnpa-^ 
thetic imagination the prospect of per- 
petual rain. Well, I had -ordered a life- 
preserver, and, holding a banner aloft bearing the 
strange device, Apre^ moi le Deluge I was about 
to take to the river in a row-boat (the Lahn being 
less moist than the land), when that distinguished 
foreigner, the Sun, suddenly appeared and turned 
the tide of afl&iirs. That this change should have 
come o'er the spirit of our nightmare on the 
Fourth of July was a compliment to the Ameri- 
can colony which we duly appreciated ; and when 
sixteen of us, men and women, sat down to dinner 
in a pavilion of the Hotel dAngleterre, the Amer- 
ican flag floating over us, we concluded that our 
lines might have fallen in less pleasant places. 

Our dinner was pleasant, and though our 
speeches, recitations, and songs were impromptu, 
they were quite as bad as though we had passed 



THE GLORIOUS FOURTH AND SO FORTH. 199 

sleepless nights in their spontaneous preparation. 
The bill of fare savored of American soil. 

MENU DU 4 JUILLET. 

Potage r^publicain. 

Poissox. 

Samiion, *' sauce for goose and gander." 

Releves. 

Filet de boeuf garni de truffes a Tadministration. 

Legumes. 

Choux de Pliiladelpliie. 

Entrees. 

Salmi de canards a la Renter. — Haricots de Chnppaqua. 

ROTIS. _ 

Jennes poulets a la Conference de la Cinquieme Avenue. 

Salade de Baltimore. 

Compotes d'Horace Greeley. 

Entremets. 

Ponding Monitor, sauce piquante. 

Glaces au Grant. 

Dessert. 

Mr. W. J. Florence, our genial chairman, made 
fitting remarks upon " The Day we celebrate," 
and read regrets from high and mighty potentates, 
that were received with applause. As these let- 
ters are very characteristic, I have taken the 
trouble to copy them. They give a better idea of 
their writers than can be obtained from any other 
source. The first is from Kaiser Wilhelm, who is 



200 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

now visiting Ems, and drinking mineral water 
with as much pertinacity as though subject to all 
the ills that flesh is heir to : — 

KuRHAUs, July 2, 1872. 

Herr Florence, — I regret exceedingly that I can- 
not he present to-day at your festival, hut as I am 
buried in the San Juan or British North American 
boundary question (a matter which concerns you 
nearly), I must necessarily decline the honor. 

Being umpire in the boundary affair, you will at 
once perceive how imperative it is that I should give 
my whole time and attention to it. I am, with assur- 
ances of my most distinguished consideration, 

WiLHELM VON HOHENZOLLERN. 

No. 2. is no less polite, and, owing to Mr. Flor- 
ence's marvellous knowledge of German, the senti- 
ment was rendered with bewildering effect : — 

Vienna, July 2, 1872. 
Herzog^ Florence, — The invitation to attend your 
Fourth of July dinner at Ems has this moment been 
handed to me by cler Hof- Marshal Von Lynderkypop- 
schafferhausen. Deeply as I am impressed with your 
kindness, I regret exceedingly that aflPairs of a most 
urgent nature demand my presence at the capital. I 
" would that I could be with thee in fact," " would that 
I could be with thee every day and hour," as your com- 
patriot the poet — Brigham Young — so touchingly re- 
marks when writing an encyclical to the heads of his 
household. 



THE GLORIOUS FOURTH AND SO FORTH 201 

I send the follo^vmg sentiment, which I am sure will 
find a response in every American breast. 

An gaspiel shielpost lagei'bier, 
New Yorker stfiats zietung verhoftish, 
Verkoftstetic hiern schaffausen, 
Von der Rheinprovinciems badwasser, 
Eisenbahn surgroschen ein thalerof, 
Der Wach am Rhelm." 

Or, as you would say in your own noble language, 

" Lives thei'e a man with soul so dead, 
Who never to himself hath said, 
*This is my own, my native land ' '? " 

Franz Josef Hapsburger. 

Then followed this friendly note from the hero 
of Sedan, over which we wept as one man : — 

CiiiSLEHUEST, ]\Ionday, July 1, 1872. 
Cher Ami, — Present my compliments to your as- 
sembly and say that I hoped to meet the American 
colony in Paris, but circumstances over which I have 
no control prevented the consummation of my wishes. 
It rains in England, and the star of my destiny is no 
longer visible. 

The courtesy of yoiu' iuAT^tation moves me to tears, 
and bitterly do I lament the impossibility of visiting 
Germany at present. Some of the happiest hours of 
my life have been passed there. 

Hoping to assist at your festivities next year in Paris, 
and waiting for something to " turn up," 
I am, tout d vous, 

Napoleon III. 
A Monsieur W. J. Flokexce, Bad-Ems. 
9* 



202 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

Beiiedetti's letter of regret arrived too late to be 
read, but he assured us all that during his last 
visit to Ems his "cure" had been so 'complete as 
to render a return unadvisable. Bismarck's tele- 
gram was received with the soup, and read thus : 
" Not well. Sworn to attend no more dinners. 
Bothered by the Jesuits. Either they '11 be the 
death of me or I '11 be the death of them. Look 
out for them in America. Breakers ahead." We 
had reached the entrees {canards) when two notes 
were placed in my hands, — one from Arthur 
Helps, and the other from Earl Russell. I ab- 
stained from then making them public, as I did 
not wish to destroy the harmony of the dinner. 

Osborne House, Isle of Wight, July 1, 1872. 
By order of her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, 
I present her Most Gracious Majesty's comphments to 
the American colony at Ems, and state that her Most 
Gracious Majesty never attends any thanksgivings 
saving such as are held in her honor or that of the 
royal f amity. As the entire American continent was 
convulsed with sorrow during the almost fatal illness 
of his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, her Most 
Gracious Majesty instructs me to say that so complete 
is the recovery of his Royal Highness as to warrant a 
return to all those sports which become the first gentle- 
man in England. Thus, while visiting Paris, his Royal 
Highness showed all of his accustomed public spirit by 



THE GLORIOUS FOURTH AND SO FORTH. 203 

visiting the Jardiii Mal>ille and doing tliat homage to 
Mademoiselle Schneider which she so well merits, 
thereby verifying the prediction of the Dean of West- 
minster, that the recovery of his Eoyal Highness would 

be a blessing to Great Britain. 

Arthur Helps. 

House of Lokds, Westminster, July 2, 1872. 
Ladies axd Gentlemen, — Accept my thanks for 
your invitation to be present at the dinner given in 
honor of a victory over England gained many years 
ago ; but as I am very busy celebrating England's much 
more recent ^dctory over America, you will, if you pos- 
sess that Yankee acumen for which the House of Lords 
gives you credit, appreciate the motive that detains me 
in London. I am a blunt man ; permit me, therefore, 
to recall the fact that your Secretary of State, Mr. 
Fish, declared that "the indirect claims" should be 
settled by the Geneva arbitration, and not in advance 
by England. Again, permit me to recall the fact of 
England's determination not to be present at the 
Geneva arbitration if payment for these "indirect 
claims " were not disallowed. My persistence in keep- 
ing this determination before our vacillating Ministry 
actually obtained an official note from the United 
States Minister at the Court of St. James, in which we 
were assured that the United States Avould waive these 
preposterous demands. With this understanding Eng- 
land goes before the board of arbitration at Geneva ; 
and though you delude your souls into thinking that 
because the arbitrators ruled out the " indirect claims " 



204 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

America has triumphed, be good enougli to remember 
the previous drama in the House of Lords, without 
which the farce at Geneva could not be enacted. What 
sort of a figure you present to the eyes of Europe I 
know, if you do not ; and were I unfortunate enough to 
occupy your ignoble position, instead of indulging in 
buncombe over the past, I should be engaged in the 
more appropriate occupation of eating " umble pie " in 
the present. Wishing you all the joy you can extract 
from the day you celebrate, 

I am your obedient servant, 

EUSSELL. 

P. S. — It will not be my fault if the Lords do not 
kill that beastly Ballot Bill. The less England imi- 
tates Yankee notions the better. 

I make no comment on these letters. They 
speak for themselves, and so did the ladies, Mr. 
Florence calling upon Miss K F to re- 
spond to the toast drunk in our honor. By the 
way, why does this toast always conclude festivities 1 
Because women will have the last word % Miss 

F said she did not understand why she should 

have been called upon when there was present the 
flower of American comedy (Mrs. Florence,) one 
who had faced many more audiences than herself, 
unless it were that the gallant chairman had mag- 
nanimously determined to take the Field against 
the favorite. In concluding, and to show our 



THE GLORIOUS FOURTH AND SO FORTH 205 

good-will to a nation whose defeat we were that 

day celebrating, Miss F proposed the toast of 

*' England and America. May there be no division 
but the Atlantic between them." 

Then a 3'oung and good-looking Southerner, 
Mr. H ■ S , Jr., recited a poem to every- 
body's satisfaction, and we sang patriotic songs, 
adjourning late in the afternoon to witness a boat- 
race, over w^hich I draw the American flag and pre- 
serve a discreet silence. As many of us wore the 
national colors, the Germans glared somewhat fero- 
ciously at first, mistaking us for French ; but the 
Anglo-American language soon undeceived them, 
and they examined our flag hanging over the river 
with as much curiosity as Agassiz would examine 
a new fish. Thus wore the day away, and every- 
body retired in his sober senses, though all drank 
deep of — Kraenchen. 

Not a drum was heard, not a cannon roared, 

No horses ran away ; 
Bui we did our " level best " abroad, 

To celebrate the day. 

From more than one source T have heard how 
numbers of our patriotic countrymen rushed from 
Paris a few days before the Fourth in order to 
avoid paying fifty francs for the dinner and asso- 
ciating with those whom they were pleased to con- 



206 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

sider plebeian ! It is really delightful to hear that 
Americans are capable of economizing; but had the 
motive been nobler, one might be inclined to hail 
this " new departure " with greater enthusiasm. 
What an unpleasant place heaven will be to these 
superior beings ! But then, if, as we are assiu'ed, 
humility be the passport, they will never get 
there. I wonder what Thomas Jefferson would 
say to an American who thought himself too good 
to associate with a countryman, no matter of what 
degree, in rejoicing over the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. The man or woman whose social posi- 
tion and character are jeopardized, or whose taste 
is offended, by accidental and temporary association 
with such ungodly creatures as patriotic American 
citizens ought to have been born a flunky in Eng- 
land. 




ROYALTY EN DESHABILLE. 




Ems, July 12, 1872. 
DON'T know whether it be the effect of 
beer or victory, but certainly I never saw 
such a satisfied-looking people as these 
Germans. Their complacency is absolutely exas- 
perating, and I do not wonder that sanguine 
Frenchmen are driven almost wild by the sight of 
a Prussian helmet. A settled, rock-of-ages expres- 
sion about their faces suggests eternity rather than 
time, and to associate death with such imperturba- 
ble life seems impossible. The Emperor carries 
out this idea of everlasting life by being as active 
at seventy-five as many men are at fifty-five. He 
is sun, moon, and stars to every German man, wo- 
man, and child at Ems. I have given great offence 
to one woman by saying that he looks very much 
like other men, which is true (a Scotchman here 
resembling him so closely as to be called " the Em- 
peror "), and have excited indignation in the breast 



208 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

of a patriot by meekly inquiring about the Imperial 
income, and expressing surprise at his ignorance of 
the amount. " It makes no difference what the 
Kaiser's income is," replied the irate Prussian, re- 
senting the innocent question as though I had 
accused the royal family of highway robbery. 
"A few milhons more or less, and what odds'?" 
A new broom sweeps clean. In England there 
are free-born Britons sufficiently mean in spirit to 
dwell upon "the cost of royalty," and even to 
write pamphlets thereon ; but Prussians are so sat- 
isfied wdth the brand-new Empire as to view^ all 
questions in the light of insults. Before 1866, 
Germany hated Prussia for what was called " Ber- 
lin pride." Now she has gone over to the enemy, 
sweetly oblivious of the past. If you ever experi- 
enced the wrath of a boy for doubting the un- 
equalled beauty of his first pair of boots, you will 
have an accurate idea of the state of mind into 
which a German throws himself w^hen any one dares 
to criticise the Vaterland or the Hohenzollerns. 
Austrians, however, though they are scrupulously 
polite to their victorious neighbors, do not hesitate 
to unbosom themselves before disinterested for- 
eigners. "Bah! you can't speak to a Prussian 
officer nowadays ! " exclaimed a Viennese noble- 
man the other day. " They w^eigh twice as many 



ROYALTY EN DESHABILLE. 209 

pounds as they weighed before they whipped the 
French. They go about with an insulting air of 
superiority, as though they were invincible. ]}i^ous 
verrons.^' Half of this hatred is due to jealousy ; 
for Austria is doomed, and not many years hence 
her German-speaking peoples will be absorbed by 
the great and advancing Empire. The sooner the 
better, for the Hapsburghs can teach nothing but 
what is retrograde, and the complete union of 
Germany is the first step towards the Teutonic 
republic. " When we have unity of peoples, unity 
of currency, unity of laws, and unity of education, 
we shall be ready for a republic. This will be in 
about fifty years. Meanwhile we are content with 
the Empire. It is doing our work slowly but 
surely." So recently spoke a most enlightened 
German republican. He is right; but perhaps the 
end may be nearer than he dreams. The world 
moves more rapidly than when Galileo made his 
revolutionary discovery. I am quite ready to pre- 
dict that, whenever this good time comes, the Ho- 
henzollerns will yield to the logic of events with the 
utmost honhommie, retire to their private estates, 
taking nothing with them but personal property, 
and, like good patriots, offer themselves as candi- 
dates to a democratic congTess. Common-sense 
seems to be the ruling characteristic of this best 

N 



210 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

of royal families. No one accuses Wilhelm of pos- 
sessing great ability ; but surely the man who dis- 
covered Bismarck, and who follows his suggestions, 
must appreciate ability in others. That his mind 
is eminently practical shows itself constantly, and 
that he dislikes ostentation is proved by his life at 
Ems. Dressed quietly in a suit of "pepper and 
salt," he appears among the people accompanied 
by a single member of the Court, drinks his water 
at the spring like everybody else, shakes hands with 
his friends, bows to all, and discourages ceremony. 
When the Kaiser first went to Ems, he sent for all 
the physicians, receiving them most cordially, and 
sitting on the end of a table during the entire in- 
terview. Upon taking leave of them, he said, 
"Remember, gentlemen, that when you meet me 
you are not to know me, for I am a poor man and 
cannot afford to buy many hats." This was a 
polite way of informing the gentlemen that it was 
a great bore for him to return salutations, and 
that he had rather not be recognized. No phy- 
sician of Ems will be found removing his hat to 
the Emperor. His reference to poverty is not un- 
frequent. Upon the birth of one of the Crown 
Princess's children, a courtier with whom he 
chanced to be walking drew the Imperial attention 
to a trinket, remarking that it would be a suitable 



ROYALTY EN DESHABILLE. 211 

present for the happy mother. " Ah ! no," replied 
the cautious Wilhelm, " that would be a bad pre- 
cedent ; for if my daughter goes on adding to her 
family as she has begun, I should eventually bo 
ruined. I am too poor for such extravagance." 
Not long ago he received a beautiful gold and 
silver escritoire as a token of gratitude from a 
wealthy banker whom he had ennobled for largely 
endowing a hospital. Gazing at the superb gift, 
Wilhelm remarked, " My subjects are better off 
than I am. I cannot afford to make my friends 
such costly presents ! " Whether the Kaiser is 
frugal unto closeness, I do not know, but that he 
does not believe himself hedged in by divinity is 
certain. " I dined with his Majesty yesterday," 
said a German, whose position is not higher than 
that of a hotel treasurer ; " he is very frank and 
friendly." Fancy Queen Victoria doing this sort 
of thing ! Why, she lectures the Prince and 
Princess of Wales on their want of exclusiveness, 
and tells them that if they are not more careful 
they will be ''as common as her cousins, the 
Camb ridges." The Kaiser frequently gives dinners 
to the officers stationed near or visiting here, and, 
in fact, any person in government employ, either 
civil or military, is eligible to this distinction, 
which is considered ample compensation for ex- 



212 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

ceedingly meagre salaries. How these people can 
afford to live at all is a mystery. 

The Kaiser is very like his photograph, only he 
is not quite as good looking. Erect and soldierly 
in his carriage, portly but not obese in figure, he 
resembles an English country gentleman, or a 
solid, shrewd man of Boston. What his chin 
lacks in force his head makes up in obstinacy, 
while there is an extreme thickness of neck and 
breadth of cerebellum that indicate unusual fight- 
ing proclivities and a bull-dog tenacity. I should 
say that it would be difficult to pouod a new idea 
into his head or an old one out. I have no doubt 
that Monsieur On Dit is right in asserting that 
Bismarck has much difficulty in obtaining the Im- 
perial consent to many necessary changes, that 
reforms are retarded in consequence, and that the 
great coup against the Jesuits has been the w^ork 
of much time and endless argument. When a 
man does not become king until he is sixty years 
of age, nor emperor until he is sixty -nine, he is 
likely to be less open to conviction than one born 
in the purple or inheriting a crown at an earlier 
period. This same Monsieur On Dit declares that 
the Crown Prince is more liberal than his father, 
while it is well known that the Empress Augusta 
is politically far in advance of her husband. She 



ROYALTY EN DESHABILLE. 213 

it was who, when the Imperial crown was offered 
to her brother-in-law in 1818, begged him to ac- 
cept it, her dream of a great Geinnan Empire even 
then being most vivid. " Do not heed her ! " cried 
the Queen on her knees before the King. " Your 
acceptance will be my death." " Then die ! " ex- 
claimed the indignant Augusta. "Of what value 
is your life to Prussia, — you, who have never 
given birth to an heirl" Augusta has lived to 
realize her ambition, and it speaks well for her to 
know that she is interesting herself in female edu- 
cation, acknowledging that the present system is 
by no means adequate to the requirements of Ger- 
man girls. Her last enterprise is the establish- 
ment at Charlottenburg of the Empress Augusta 
Boarding School for the orphan daughters of cler- 
gymen and officers who died in the last wars. 
The best teachers are provided, and the education 
is to be gratuitous ; but in order to secure a suffi- 
cient revenue (here comes in the Hohenzollern 
shrewdness), the Empress proposes to receive into 
the institution a certain number of American and 
English girls on payment of sixty-six guineas an- 
nually. It is quite possible that there may be 
American families residing abroad who will be glad 
to know of it, although, for my part, I 'd as soon 
think of sendino- a o-irl to the Cannibal Islands as 



214 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

educating her in Europe. No amount of French 
and German compensates for the absence of such 
an EngUsh education as can only be obtained at 
home. Female mental discipline is unknown in 
Europe. However, that the Empress should inau- 
gurate a new era in Germany is one of the signs 
of the times, and we women should wish her God- 
speed. The Empress's interest seems to be uni- 
versal. When visiting Queen Victoria at Windsor 
last spring, she declared that her first day in Lon- 
don should be devoted to the German hospital. 
Her examination of every department and her 
knowledge of details made a great impression on 
the physician who escorted her through the wards, 
and who gave me an account of the reception. I 
am not so rabid a republican but I can say a good 
word for royalty when deserving, and it is a satis- 
faction to know that the German Empire owes much 
to w^omen. It was the intelligent influence of his 
mother, a Prussian princess, that induced the King 
of Bavaria to be first in proclaiming Wilhelm Kai- 
ser, — an example that had very great weight with 
other kingdoms and principalities. So, if a silly 
woman, a fashion-plate, plunged France into a war 
with Prussia, as many who were behind the scenes 
assert, two sensible women did much to found a 
great empire ; and even the fashion-plate was the 
cause of a republic ! 



THEATRE ROYAL, BERLIN. 




Ems, Jul}' 15. 
i]S I am a spectator in the Theatre Royal, 
it will be expected of me to tell all I 
hear concerning the prominent dramatis 
personam. I have not much faith in gossip, for I 
know how fond little people are of maligning big- 
people ; only become famous, and you will be 
credited with murder, arson, and a general indif- 
ference to all laws, human or divine ; but it really 
seems as though there were much truth in the 
report, universal throughout Germany, that Mr. 
and Mrs. Kaiser heartily indorse the poet's creed 
of distance lending enchantment to the view. The 
old dogma of matrimonial unity is a fallacy among 
crowned heads, it being the privilege of royalty to 
join cats and dogs, and fight through life or sepa- 
rate in private, provided the convenances of their 
station are preserved. Considering that nobody on 
the Continent, except such as enjoy abject squalor, 



216 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

is permitted to marry for love, I wonder that well- 
to-do babies are not born without hearts, as, under 
the present regime, they are legally unnecessary, 
and illegally cause no end of mischief. There is 
a high premium paid on vice in these grand old 
countries to which American savages come for im- 
provement. " Love whatever woman you please," 
says society to men, " provided you do not commit 
the unpardonable crime of marrying below your 
station or your income." " Love nobody at all,' 
says society to girls, "until your parents have 
married you to the proper person ; then if you 
are very discreet and make no scandal, you may 
satisfy your sentiment sub rosa.'' Between the 
two, moralit}^ goes to the wall. In the upper 
classes the young men are roues, the married men 
are unfaithful, the young girls are nonentities, the 
married women are unhappy, or untrue, or both. 
This is the rule ; of course there are many excep- 
tions, more, perhaps, than ought to be expected 
when one bears in mind that the hero and heroine 
of the domestic drama are not consulted with re- 
gard to the very difficult parts they are required 
to play. American girls, who have been free all 
their lives, enjoying the society of young men, and 
proving that friendship between the sexes is not a 
myth, as these acute Europeans assjert, because a 



THJ^ATRE ROYAL, BERLIN. 217 

base education readers them incapable of it, rebel 
at European manners. A young girl dare not 
speak to a man ; and as for walking with one, wh}^, 
her reputation would be gone immediately, even 
though that man were '' a lean and slippered pan- 
taloon " in the respectable guise of an uncle. She 
does the naive until the day of her marriage ; the 
day after she appears as a woman of the world, 
thorough mistress of herself, — a transformation 
so miraculous as to prove beyond doubt that the 
young girl is as much an actress as ^he iiigemie of 
the French stage. With all their conventional 
proprieties, these girls are far more knowing than 
the independent Americans, and are as little to be 
trusted as their brothers. Deprive people of lib- 
erty, and they will take license. " I hate Europe," 
said an American girl the other day. " I can't 
breathe here. Everything is improper. When I 
am left in the house without my married sister, I 
can't receive any gentleman for fear of scandal ; for 
if the least suspicion is hinted, you are regarded 
with as little respect as the most degraded. Fancy 
my not being able to see a dear old friend this 
morning because I was alone ! He had important 
intelligence to communicate, but did not dare to 
come up. The servants would have been the first 
to pull me to pieces had I received him ; yet were 
10 



218 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

I a married woman I might entertain every man 
of my acquaintance, and flirt with other women's 
husbands without comment. I 'm sick of it and 
want to go home." In walking, the young girl 
must always be accompanied by a petticoat of 
some description. It may be attached to the 
most worthless of hirelings, as many of the maids 
prove themselves to be ; but with this society does 
not concern itself. The only point insisted upon 
is, that girls shall not appear alone in public. 
Don't you see what great advantages are gained 
by constant association with ignorant, supersti- 
tious, and frequently immoral servants'? If you 
do not, Europe does. But a nos Kaisers. 

They say that the Emperor when j^oung was 
deeply enamored of one quite worthy of him in 
station, but that his father insisted upon his mar- 
rying the present Empress, between whom and 
himself there was little sympathy, and with whom 
he has had nothing more than a speaking acquaint- 
ance for twenty-five years! They say that Au- 
gusta is very proud, domineering, and rigid in 
matters of etiquette, whereas the Emperor hates 
form of every kind ; but, then, again, I heard one 
of the Empress's former ladies of honor declare her 
to be most amiable and kind. The w^oman always 
receives the most abuse; but I believe that in matri- 



THEATRE ROYAL, BERLIN. 219 

moiiial disagreements both parties are to blame. 
I have always felt convinced that if the shade of 
the typical virago, Xantippe, could only rap out 
her experience with her husband, Socrates the 
married man would not be as faultless as Socrates 
the philosopher. Philosophers are unpleasant to 
have in the house. They always forget to market, 
never take their meals regularly, never comb their 
hair, never buy a new suit of clothes, always wear 
shocking bad hats, never button their gloves, and 
are so engrossed in improving the human race as 
never to pay any attention to the individual speci- 
mens about them. Last, but worst sin of all, 
they never notice what a woman has on ! If this 
is not enough to ruin the female temper, what is 1 
Do you suppose that Socrates would appreciate 
one of Fanet and Beer's exquisite dresses'? No, 
indeed. I dare say he was constantly offending 
Xantippe's taste. But once more to take up the 
thread of the Hohenzollerns. They say that the 
Emperor's greatest grievance against the Empress 
is her desire to meddle with politics, and this on 
dit is probably true. The last person from whom 
an obstinate man will receive advice is his wife ; 
and if it be difficult for Bismarck to impress the 
Imperial mind, — Bismarck, the maker of an Em- 
pire, — how thoroughly unpalatable must be any 



220 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

attempt of the Empress to rule, especially when 
she is more radically inclined than the Kaiser. 
From cursory observation of the Empress's face, I 
should say that she had will and little tact; that 
she went direct to whatever point she wished to 
gain. This is n't the way to accomplish your end 
with obstinate men ; and I fancy that if Augusta 
were French, she would be a power behind the 
throne. I have no doubt that fascinating women 
have obtained, and can still obtain, great sway 
over the Emperor ; for though he possesses a solid 
foundation of sense, he is thoroughly German, and 
a German has no respect for a woman's head. 
For a woman to make a direct attack upon his 
reason is suicide. Let her appeal to his heart and 
eye, and he yields without knowing it. I confess 
that I feel sorry for the Empress. It certainly is 
not her business to usurp the authority of her 
husband, but perpetual suppression must be fear- 
fully tantalizing to a person in her position. A 
woman without tact should die. The only female 
diplomacy now tolerated is that of consummate 
acting. Did the Empress Augusta depend upon 
acting for a living, I fear that she would starve in 
a week. 

The other day there passed through the street 
a man bearing upon his head plaster busts of the 



TRf^ATRE ROYAL, BERLIN. 221 

Emperor and Empress, the Crown Prince and 
Crown Princess. In order to keep the first two 
face to face, one rope was tied around both necks. 
Fritz and his wife seemed to require no such pre- 
caution, and I thought this somewhat significant. 
Busts may be tied together with impunity, not 
people ; so, w^hen the Emperor visits one watering- 
place, the Empress visits another. While Monsieur 
takes the " cure " here, Madame resides at Coblentz 
in an exceedingly comfortable palace on the Rhine, 
the windows of which command a fine view of the 
picturesque fortress of Ehrenbreitstein. It was to 
this palace that she once retired for six months. 
But all the proprieties of state are maintained. 
Now it is the Emperor who drives to Coblentz for 
the purpose of dining with his royal spouse, and 
then it is the Empress who comes to Ems to dine 
at the Kurhaus. Only a few minutes ago I saw 
the Empress drive off in a quiet cov2:)e drawn by a 
pair of fine black horses. The footman was over- 
powering in his rigidity. As he stood by the door 
to receive orders, you knew without being told 
that royalty sat within. You sniffed a superior 
being in the air; everybody stopped and gazed; 
men and women at the spring forgot to sip their 
water ; the Emperor's chamberlain fluttered about 
in white pantaloons, dress-coat, and no end of 



222 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

orders, — a queer dress for an Imperial dinner, 
was it nof? — the Empress shrank hack in her 
carriage, bowing, yet trying to escape observation ; 
and not until she drove off did the phlegmatic 
Germans return to their normal condition. 
Augusta is a dark-haired, dark-eyed, well-pre- 
served woman, of erect carriage, who seems to be 
much younger than her husband. I did not envy 
her as she passed. A woman accompanied to her 
carriage by a loving husband is a much pleasanter 
spectacle than an empress escorted by a fawning 
courtier. A stupid populace gape at the latter, 
and consider the former unworthy of notice ; yet, 
among European aristocracy, one sight is as rare 
as the other. It is their inestimable privilege to 
pay servants for such attentions as with us are 
rendered by love or friendship. 




AMERICAN FOLLY. 




Hotel Chathaim, Paris, August 1, 1872. 
OW that I am where Americans most do 
congregate, the echo of howls of disgust 
assails my ears. Any one who dares to 
tell the truth must, as Mrs. Gamp remarks, "take 
the consequences of the situation." That I have 
told the truth concerning Americans abroad is 
shown by these demonstrations of disapprobation ; 
for when caps do not fit, and shoes do not pinch, 
howls and shrieks are conspicuous by their ab- 
sence. Nothing convinced me of the basis of fact 
upon which Mrs. Trollope and Dickens founded 
their American books so much as the rage excited 
by them. It is the guilty who are always most 
blatant in the assumption of virtue. Innocence 
rarely acts on the defensive. 

Judging by the way I am attacked, one would 
suppose that I hated Americans, and considered 
all of them snobs ! Because you convict a thief 



224: AMERICANS ABROAD. 

of stealing spoons, all the world steals spoons. 
The deduction is logical. But since the outcry, 
I am still more persuaded of the necessity of 
those mirrors which, held up to nature, cause us 
to see ourselves as others see us. Unless one be 
a downright fool, no medicine is more beneficial in 
its results. Why, I have been mild in my cen- 
sure, and feeble in illustration, considering the 
countless facts to draw from. Paris alone would 
furnish sufficient material for a sensational book. 
People talk about the delights of society here ; 
but I fail to appreciate them, as I fail to appreciate 
the delights of the winter colony at Nice. All 
colonies within foreign towns savor more or less of 
Little Peddlington. Of course, there are some 
charming people, but as a rule society is cut up 
into cliques. Everybody is so uncertain of his 
own position as to be extremely suspicious of 
everj^body else. Shoddy does its best to make 
wealth the standard ; and because money buys 
flunkies and the first floors of hotels, it frequently 
succeeds. Life is made a burden to you by the 
perpetual exhibition of such jealousy, envy, malice, 
and all uncharitableness as only idle men and 
women can afford to indulge in. Besides small 
cliques, these model colonies are generally divided 
into two parties arrayed against each other, in 



AMERICAN FOLLY. 225 

comparison with which the wars of the Bianchi 
and Neri, the Guelphs and Ghibelines, the Colonna 
and Orsini, hide their diminished heads. On your 
advent you are seized upon by partisans of both 
houses, who pour into your ears tales that would 
not only cause the quills of the fretful porcupine 
to stand on end, but would aggravate his fretful- 
ness to the verge of manslaughter. You are 
bullied and badgered into giving an opinion, and 
enrolled upon whichever side you least disapprove. 
Woe be unto jow if you preserve an armed neu- 
trality ! Then you are cordially detested by both 
armies. And woe be unto you if, after giving in 
your adhesion to the Colonna, you are found hob- 
nobbing with the Orsini ! This is the unpardon- 
able sin. Can you conceive of anything more 
ridiculously childish than such a condition of 
things ] It seems incredible until you have 
assisted at the spectacle, after which you are 
plunged in melancholy at the littleness of certain 
men and women. We laugh when we read in 
"The Corsican Brothers" of many lives being lost 
between two factions, because one side wrings the 
neck of a chicken belonging to the other. We 
think that we are not as Corsicans are, and stroke 
ourselves with satisfaction and becoming humility. 
Our colonies do not wring the necks of chick- 
10* o 



226 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

ens, but I have yet to be told that their wars are 
insph^ed by motives more exalted. One colony 
was convulsed to its centre last winter because a 
lady, while dancing a quadrille, refused to give her 
hand to another lady in the same set. Of course, 
the slight was exceedingly ill-bred ; but humanity 
has very little to do when it converts into a gen- 
eral feud what is really beneath contempt. In 
many instances, living in Europe renders Ameri- 
cans very narrow, very selfish, and very unpatri- 
otic. Existence consists of a perpetual round of 
pleasure-seeking. To be in certain capitals and 
watering-places during the season, to dress or 
attempt to dress better than any one else, are the 
chief ends of men and women. What befalls 
America is of no consequence as long as they re- 
ceive their dividends. The folly of some of the 
women absolutely passes all understanding, and 
the last instance I have heard of makes me blush 
for my country. Fancy a mother who thinks it a 
greater " catch " for her daughter to marry a Prus- 
sian officer than to marry an American. " Well, 
you see, he is a nobleman," argues the mother to 
an indignant friend. " Suppose he is noble, what 
then '? Is he not ]30or and a foreigner *? Would 
he marry your daughter if she were not rich "? " 
" No, it is asfainst the law. All Prussian officers 



AMERICAN FOLLY. 227 

must marry women with money." " And you en- 
courage your daughter to give up her country, to 
leave her home, for the purpose of marrying a 
man for whom, were she penniless, she would have 
no attraction ! She will settle down in a wretched 
provincial town, while her husband goes wherever 
he is ordered. For society she will have the inane 
gossip of German women, who are good house- 
keepers, but are very narrow-minded, and are fear- 
ful scandal-mongers. This will be varied occasion- 
ally by a trip to Berlin, and a presentation at 
Court. And you call this a brilliant marriage ! 
Do you realize that woman in Germany is an infe- 
rior animal, and that your daughter is accustomed 
to such attention as she will never receive from 
Teutons V "I never looked at the matter in 
that light," replies the foolish mother. " After 
all, it doesn't seem as eligible as I thought, and 
perhaps my daughter will change her mind." 

With such a mother has she any mind to 
change] These German officers are fine partis. 
They are all more or less noble ; that is, they be- 
long to noble families, and, being in the army, are 
attached to the Court. The majority of them are 
genteel paupers, but are not permitted to marry 
rich German women whose families are mercan- 
tile, as such would be mesalliances ; yet they will 



228 



AMERICANS ABROAD. 



marry any American girl with money, though 
every dollar be made in trade ! Distance lends 
enchantment to the shop. One would suppose 
that self-respect and decent pride would prevent 
our women from so stultifying themselves ; but 
the longer one lives the more one becomes per- 
suaded that nothing is rarer than common-sense. 




A TRAIN OF THOUGHT. 




Paris, August 2, 1872. 
EVER go to Cologne from Paris by the 
night train, unless you wish to know what 
misery means. We barbaric Americans 
have an absurd idea that the horrors of night-trav- 
elling ought to be mitigated by art ; that com- 
forts which induce sleep should be administered at 
reasonable rates : and that to change cars in the 
dead of night is to fly in the face of an injured 
public. On the Continent of Europe no such 
superstitions prevail. Besides paying much more 
for railroad travelling than at home, you are ren- 
dered proportionably uncomfortable. Instead of 
luxurious, airy palace-cars, with retiring-rooms in 
which you can move, be served with meals or 
refreshments, sold the latest newspaper or the last 
new novel, you are shut up in the compartment 
of a short carriage, with three persons on your 
side and four persons opposite, with nothing on 



230 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

which to rest your feet, and with a back to jonv 
seat which is so charmingly constructed as to 
throw your weary head forward and render life a 
burden. There is no ventilation, saving such as 
comes from the windows and from small gratings 
above them. If the weather be warm, both win- 
dows are left open, everybody is in danger of 
catching cold from the draught, and the four 
unhappy wTetches facing the engine are covered 
with dust. Even then the air is bad. Should the 
weather be cold, both windows are closed, your 
feet are warmed by pans of hot water, and you 
breathe an atmosphere foul with poison thrown 
off by human lungs. Then, though perhaps all the 
roads in England and some roads on the Continent 
are better built and consequently smoother than 
ours, reading is quite as injurious to sight, on ac- 
count of the jolting of the small, light carriages. 
Cooped up in such a pen with seven strangers, 
four of whom glare at you, your vis-a-vis generally 
being hideous and given to such, unlimited staring 
as to become a frightful fascination, with never a 
glass of water, and rarely an opportunity to stretch 
your cramped legs, you pursue your uneasy way, 
and curse inventive genius for not having discovered 
the means of properly navigating balloons. How 
I have lonajed for balloons this summer ! Had T 



A TRAIN OF THOUGHT. 231 

been as sure of coming down as of going up, I 
should have confided in them two months ago. 
And this reminds me of a capital idea, which may 
have originated in the fertile brain of Joe Miller, 
but which I heard last winter at the Christy Min- 
strels in St. James's Hall. It is the first time I 
ever heard anything /or the first time from the lips 
of a negTo minstrel. 

Said Bones to Banjo, " How long does it take to 
go to America % " 

"About ten days," rephed Banjo. 

" pshaw ! I could do it in twelve hours." 

'' How so ] " inquired the inquisitive Banjo. 

" The earth revolves on its axle-tree every 
twenty-four hours ; does n't it '? " 

" Yes." 

" Well, now, you see I 'd just take a balloon in 
Hyde Park, I 'd go up a little w^ay, and there I 'd 
anchor. I 'd wait twelve hours until America came 
round, and then down I 'd drop." 

The suggestion is brilliant, the only difficulty 
being how to anchor. This slight impediment re- 
moved, and what stomach will be rash enough to 
brave the ao:onizinoj swells of the Atlantic Ocean 1 
Given a trustw^orthy helm, and who will insult his 
humanity by taking a railroad train] We have 
been brought into the world before our time. We 



232 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

live in dark ages. We ought to be born one hun- 
dred years hence. Then Science will have an- 
swered the questions she is now asking ; civiliza- 
tion will not be in its present frowzy condition ; 
everybody will eat with his fork ; cooking, even in 
England, in our Western States, and the Cannibal 
Islands, will be reduced to a fine art ; coal will be 
abolished, and we shall draw heat directly from 
the sun ; nothing will end in smoke, not even ci- 
gars ; women will have equal rights and education 
with men, aud society will not be the bore it is at 
present ; everybody will thoroughly know the bus- 
iness he professes, which almost nobody does at 
present ; newspapers will tell the truth ; Ameri- 
can editors will cease to call one another pet 
names ; all Europe will be republican ; Africa 
will be populated with Livingstones and Stanleys ; 
there will be no more relations in office, and no 
more Presidents in America to drive people mad 
every four years, and misrule them the rest of the 
time ; and, to return to our starting-point, rail- 
roads will only be used for the transportation of 
cattle and freight. 

Bad as day travelling is, it becomes luxurious 
when compared with that of the night. Europe 
sneers at sleeping-cars, so you sit bolt upright, or, by 
paying a very high price for a coupe, you may be a 



A TRAIN OF THOUGHT. 233 

little less wretched ; but as a coupe holds four per- 
sons, and you are no better off in it than elsewhere 
should there be more than two occupants, you 
can imagine the length of purse required to as- 
suage misery. In going to Cologne there were 
three of us, — all women, — so we concluded to 
secure a co2cpe, which we did after much struggling 
and paying the conductor a big fee to keep vacant 
the fourth seat. This he promised, assured us 
that the coupe went through, and that we should 
not be disturbed until our arrival in that town of 
thirty-nine smells. Congratulating ourselves upon 
the comparative comfort of our situation, one of 
us took the floor, and the seats were divided be- 
tween and myself. Had I been three feet 

long, this arrangement might have answered ; but 
as m}^ space ended where my knees began, I 
passed most of the time in inventing impossible 
positions wherein to dispose of superfluous me. 
Suddenly, and at all hours, conductors darted 
their heads in at the window, and demanded, 
" Billets, s'il vous plait." European conductors 
never let you alone. They are always boring 
holes in or tearing off" your tickets with never a 
word of information ; or if they give any, you may 
stake your letter of credit that it is wrong. They 
hang on to the outside of the carriages, rain or 



234 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

shine, hot or cold (the object of travelhng being 
to render everybody as wretched as is compatible 
with existence), and, locking you up in your pen, 
leave you to die of fits or fire unmolested. 

We had no sooner grown somewhat drowsy, than 
we were aroused by the intelligence that we had 
arrived at the custom-house, and our luggage was 
to be examined. Now our luggage had been regis- 
tered to Cologne, and I faintly suggested as 
much ; but the conductor seemed so corpulently 
wise as. to defy argument, and we sleepily betook 
ourselves to the douane. There we waited and 
waited for the trunks de ir to our souls, but in 
vain. Finally we made bold to ask the cause of 
delay, and were told what we knew before, — that 
through-luggage was examined at Cologne. At- 
tempting to return to our coupe, we were stopped, 
turned into the waiting-room, and forced to remain 
standing until the door was opened, which was not 
before all the way-luggage had been examined. 
On the Continent you are always locked up and 
treated like a flock of sheep. Do you marvel that 
the people do not know what to do with liberty 
when they get it % The next pleasing incident 
was being routed up at two o'clock in the morning, 
told that the coupe went no farther, and forced to 
descend, bags, bundles, and umbrellas. When we 



A TMAJ.X OF Til OUGHT. 235 

remonstrated and claimed the coupe as ours, the 
conductor became deaf, and said it went no 
farther. Out we got, walked about a dreary 
station for half an hour, paid more porters more 
money, and finally secured a compartment for Co- 
logne, where we arrived at five, a. m. Fourteen 
hours en route, one unjustifiable disturbance at a 
custom-house, which in no way concerned us, and 
a fraudident letting of a coupe, which we were 
turned out of before reaching our destination : 
if these pleasantries occurred in America they 
would be attributed to republican institutions. 
The charm of the whole thing is, that there is 
no change of carriages in the day trains over the 
same route. Now, it really seems to me that 
Americans, w^ho are probably more numerous than 
any other first-class passengers, have a right to 
protest against such outrages as those to which we 
were subjected, and are justified in demanding the 
adoption of the American system of drawing-room 
and palace cars. The change must be made 
eventually ; for the world moves, however much 
red tape may maintain the divine right of stag- 
nation ; and unless travelling in Europe be made 
easier than it is at present, Americans, after the 
novelty of a foreign trip wears off, will prefer to 
remain at home. 



236 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

Then the fearful charges for luggage are enough 
to exasperate even so meek a man as Moses. Al- 
though I have never journeyed any great distance 
with more than two ordinary trunks, the price of 
my luggage has frequently equalled the price of 
my ticket. In several instances on short routes 
the former has been in excess. This ought not to 
be tolerated ; and if American journals published 
in Europe combine in an attack upon the present 
idiotic railway management of the Old World, 
there may be a chance of speedier reform than 
can be brought about by any other means. Dare 
to attack established customs, and it is astounding 
how soon established customs give way. They 
only endure from the cowardly policy of letting 
them alone. No one, for example, denies the ad- 
vantage of the American system of checking lug- 
gage, and yet these old fossils hesitate to trans- 
form bad into good 1 It really is the duty of 
Americans to make Europe a region fit to travel in. 




LONDON AND THE ENGLISH. 




London, August 4, 1872. 
HY is it that Americans so cordially dis- 
like London 1 Probably because they 
know nothing about it, which is the 
best of all reasons, as it is founded entirely on 
prejudice, and prejudice rules the world. It was 
the habit of some Roman dignitary, upon giving 
audience to strangers who took leave of him after 
a fortnight's visit to the imperial city, to dismiss 
them with a "farewell," while to those who bade 
him " good by" after a residence of three months, 
he cheerfully said, Au revoir. His theory, 
evolved from observation, was that travellers who 
remained a few days left either in disgust or 
indifference, while those who lingered several 
months became enamoured, and always returned. 
It seems to me that the Roman's rule will apply 
equally well to London. Leave here at the end 
of a week, and the English vocabulary is not rich 



238 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

enough to express your discontent. Be here six 
months, and you desire to rempan six mouths 
longer. Keside here a year, and you leave reluc- 
tantly, with every intention of returning in the 
dim future, that you may once more embrace old 
friends. This is not the ordinary verdict, because 
most travellers come under the category of fort- 
nightlies ; ]:)ut it is certainly mine, because I be- 
long to the yearlings ; and it was certainly Haw"- 
thorne's, to whose book on England I have just 
turned, and who, oddly enough, associates London 
with Rome as I did a moment since, when inno- 
cent of his opinion. " There is nothing else in 
life," writes Hawthorne, " comparable " (in its way, 
of course, he means) " to the thick, heavy, oppres- 
sive, sombre delight which an American is sensible 
of, hardly knowing whether to call it a pleasure 
or a pain, in the atmosphere of London. The 
result was that I acquired a home feeling there, 
as nowhere else in the world, though afterwards I 
came to have a somewhat similar sentiment in 
regard to Rome ; and as long as either of those 
two great cities shall exist, the cities of the Past 
and of the Present, a man's native soil may crum- 
ble beneath his feet without leaving him altogether 
homeless upon epa'th." 

I have nothing to say in defence of London 



LONDOX AND THE ENGLISH. 239 

weather. November is steeped in a profound 
gloom of yellow fog ; December and January are 
not much better ; February, March, and April are 
brighter, but subject to east winds ; May and June 
are frequently raw and cold ; and the only months 
upon which any tolerable dependence can be 
placed are July, August, and September. Octo- 
ber ouQ:ht to be fine, but the worst fosrs of the 
season frequently take place in this most beautiful 
of autumn months. Fog or no fog, there is al- 
ways an atmosphere heavy with smoke ; you 
breathe as through a chimney darkly ; " blacks," 
totally regardless of complexion, settle upon your 
alabaster brow and lily-white nose, making dirty 
streaks wherever they go. Then it rains peren- 
nially ; or if it does not rain, it threatens, so you 
rarely move without an umbrella. For pedes- 
trians to wear good clothing is impossible. While 
india-rubbers are seldom required, the streets, 
eight months out of twelve, are in such a filthy 
condition as to render finery an outrage on the 
eternal fitness of thin^j^s. There are no crossino:s, 
as with us ; nobodj^ in business streets, and few 
elsewhere, dream of sweeping the pavements ; so 
that, although you are never up to your ankles in 
mud, you are perpetually wading through the 
stickiest of slush. The weather is never " hor- 



240 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

rid" and "awful," as in Amsrica. ' It is always 
"nasty" and "beastly." A diamond edition of 
the deluge is going on perpetually. But as the 
Devil should ever have his due, it must be remem- 
bered that England is free from extremes. Though, 
owing to the dampness, you wear as heavy clothes 
here in winter as at home, the weather is never as 
cold, snow is a rare visitor, and intense heat almost 
unknown. There is not a day in the year that 
you cannot go out and row, ride, or walk to your 
heart's content. This is something, ay, it is a 
great deal ; but nothing in the world can compen- 
sate me for the absence of a bright sun and dry 
atmosphere. I like London, in spite of its climate. 
I like it best in the winter months, when the 
weather is worst. I like it because of the people. 
" What ! out of the season ! " Yes, precisely 
for this reason. During May, June, and July, 
which are called the season because extreme 
fashion comes up from the country to go to the 
opera, inspect the Royal Academy, and visit one 
another, everything is topsy-turvy. Life is a suc- 
cession of balls and receptions, four and five deep 
nightly. You see nobody except for five minutes 
in the glare of gas-light, for you no sooner arrive 
at one pa.rty than it is time to go to another. As 
the majority of London houses are very small, and 



LONDON AND THE ENGLISH. 241 

the success of a party depends upon its size, as 
the rule is to invite three times as many people 
as can be accommodated, there is a possibility of 
not being able to get up stairs, in which dilemma 
you hail your host and hostess, as ships hail one 
another at sea, by means of signals. Under these 
circumstances, I do not call society satisfactory. 
It is a delusion, a snare, a madness, an idiotic in- 
vention of a barbaric civilization, an unmitigated 

bore. 

This is London during the season. London out 
of season tells a different tale ; and, mark the in- 
solence of Fashion ! three and a half millions of 
people reside in London from January until De- 
cember, only taking vacations during August and 
September; but because a few thousand butter- 
flies appear with the early summer, this big, 
bustling Babel is out of season so long as the 
butterflies do not flutter in Hyde Park ! London 
out of season, I repeat, is most interesting. How 
can it be otherwise when it is not only the centre 
of Great Britain and Ireland, attracting to it the 
brains and energy of the United Kingdom, but 
the centre of the world, luring, if only for a 
moment, everybody from everywhere] If, there- 
fore, as I sincerely believe, the proper study of 
mankind is man, where else can the observer so 
11 p 



242 AMERICANS ABROAD, 

readily whet his curiosity, and revel in variety of 
culture and intelligence'? " The cream of external 
life is there," again writes Hawthorne ; " and what- 
ever merely intellectual or natural good we fail to 
find perfect in London, we may as well content 
ourselves to seek the unattainable thing no further 
on this earth." 

Almost all the clever literary, artistic, scientific, 
and critical English men and women reside per- 
manently in London or its vicinity. They must 
of necessitjT^ be near the great market which de- 
mands what they can supply. These in them- 
selves are one of the most magnetic features of 
society ; for what can be more attractive to a cul- 
tivated person than a dinner with Robert Brown- 
ing, whose conversation is as entertaining and 
varied as the museum at South Kensington ; a 
visit to George Miot and George Lewes, — she, 
perhaps, the cleverest woman living, and he a 
really brilliant man ; a walk along the Thames 
with that great, contradictory, inconceivable, in- 
tellectual despot, Thomas Carlyle ; a matinee 
musicale at a charming house, with Prince Ponia- 
towski and Miss Virginia Gabriel at the piano, 
and perhaps Joachim at the violin; and recep- 
tions where you are sure to meet Tyndall, Huxley, 
Herbert Spencer, Miss Thackeray, and others 



LONDON AND THE ENGLISH. 243 

equally interesting though unknown to fame ? All 
this one may obtain before the Christmas holi- 
days, and in February the assembling of Parlia- 
ment brings together whatever there is of political 
eminence ; and to my way of thinking, — although 
I cordially detest the form of government, which is 
that of a pure aristocracy ; although the House of 
Commons more or less muddles every reform it 
attempts, — many of its members are the most 
delightful companions. The very men whose 
public careers are utterly opposed — from my point 
of view be it understood — to every principle of 
justice, are charming socially ; and while we fight 
the moment politics becomes the subject of con- 
versation, we never cease to be good-natured. 
We find so many topics upon which to sympathize 
as to tolerate each other's failings (for of course I 
am thought as mad as I consider them wrong- 
headed and obstinate), and the acquaintances of 
an hour become the stanch friends of a lifetime. 
Then, when I meet an advanced English liberal, I 
embrace him (metaphorically) on the spot, seeing 
no difference between him and a fine American, 
saving that often he is more cultivated, and there- 
fore more after my own heart. Of course these 
specimens are rare, but when found tliey should 
be treasured ; for I really know nothing nobler in 



244 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

humanity than an unprejudiced, radical, first-class 
English gentleman. His respect for woman is not 
outdone by the most chivalrous American, al- 
though he may be less demonstrative in those 
little attentions to which we are accustomed ; 
his belief in women's capacity is not exceeded by 
that of George William Curtis ; and his friendl}?" 
feeling toward America is so frank and so opti- 
mistic as to make you tremble lest he may decide to 
cross the Atlantic and discover that we, too, have 
our plague-spots. The world does not often hear 
of this type of Englishman ; but he exists : other- 
wise, how could I know him 1 







EUROPEAN VERSUS AMERICAN WOMEN. 




London, August 5. 
NE day more, and my stay in Europe will 
be over. One day more, and I shall be 
^1 pacing the singularly unstable deck of 
that most untrustworthy and restless of animals, 
an Atlantic steamer. I am glad and sorry : glad 
to be going home, glad to once more take up the 
thread of an active existence ; sorry to leave 
friends that I may never meet again. Europe is 
very interesting. In fact, if you have money, it 
•is, in some respects, fascinating. If you possess 
nice tastes, it is delightful to be in the focus of 
culture, realizing that you ai'e obtaining the best 
that the world affords. If you love art, it is a 
comfort and a perpetual study to be within seeing 
distance of fixmous galleries. If you love music, 
it refreshes the soul to hear the greatest masters, 
not occasionally, as in America, but daily, should 
you desire it. If you love society, your money 



246 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

will enable you to obtain it. Your appointments 
will be comme il faut ; entertaining will be easier 
than at home, in consequence of trained servants ; 
your groom will know his business ; saddle-horses 
will be thoroughly broken ; the roads over which 
you ride and drive will have the smoothness of a 
thousand years of travel. Be a cultivated Amer- 
ican, with plenty of money, and Europe affords 
luxuries that a young country cannot furnish, 
although in the material comforts of housekeeping 
the Old World can in no way compare with the 
New. Be a cultivated, rich American, with no 
regard for aught but self, with a contempt for the 
people and a disbelief in republican institutions, 
and of course you '11 prefer this side of the Atlan- 
tic to the other. Be a cultivated American, loving 
your country, not so much because it is your 
country as because you realize that it is, after all, 
the most enlightened of countries, offering the 
greatest good to the greatest number, allowing a 
freedom of thought and action quite foreign to the 
genius of older nations, and you will never call 
Europe "home." Europe is the place to visit: 
America is the place to live and work in. There 
is the widest field for activity and for intelligence, 
there you breathe the purest air, there you are 
least trammelled with conventionalities, there you 



EUROPEAN VERSUS AMERICAN WOMEN, 247 

have the fairest chance of being a whole man, and, 
yet more, a whole woman. As a woman, I cannot 
be too grateful to those stern Puritans who, in the 
Mayflower, braved the dangers of an almost un- 
known sea. The more I think of their courage, 
the more I respect them ; the more I think of 
their effect upon civilization, the more I rejoice at 
being born after their advent. If you are a 
duchess, or, what is almost the equivalent, an 
American woman of wealth and position, Europe 
will give you so much as to cause the unthinking 
to ask, " What more would you have % " Go below 
the highest classes, and the reverse of the medal 
is soon seen. Say what they please, woman as 
woman is not respected here. Be a gr ancle dame, 
and you are courted, admired, treated with defer- 
ence, because you are a grande dame. You go 
about with carriage and footmen, which para- 
phernalia denote position or power. Go about on 
your two feet, and you will soon discover that to 
be a woman is, on the Continent, outside of Ger- 
many, to be an object of insulting interest, a crea- 
ture whom no man is bound to respect. In Ger- 
many men do not insult women : they simply 
regard them as inferiors. Women carrying the 
heaviest loads while husbands are comparatively 
free from burdens, or women yoked with dogs or 



248 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

COWS, is no uncommon spectacle. In France, 
though women are the more industrious half of 
the population, though they, as a rule, are cleverer 
than the men, though they show the greater ap- 
titude in managing business, men speak of them 
lightly, and" see in them probable or possible filles 
dejoie. I have a very great regard for French- 
women ; I don't believe them to be naturally cor- 
rupt ; and regenerated France will mean a proper 
appreciation of women, according to them that 
equality which is their due. Of Frenchmen, the 
less said the better. There are noble exceptions 
who prove that corruption is more a fashion than 
a necessity ; and when women are strong enough 
to dictate terms, Americans will readily sympa- 
thize with this same abused France. I don't 
mean shop-keeping or Imperial France, mind you. 
Both are beyond redemption. 

The great comfort of America is that a woman is 
not always made to feel her sex. She really is 
allowed to exist as a human being, not, unfortu- 
nately, with all the liberty of a man, but still with 
so much more than elsewhere as by comparison to 
be free. In Europe, I never lose the sense of sex. 
You will be told that it is highly improper for a 
young lady to walk alone in London ; that she 
thereby subjects herself to insult. This is non- 



EUROPEAN VERSUS AMERICAN WOMEN 249 

sense. For eight months I have walked about 
London daily, sometimes going through the Seven\ 
Dials, and have never met with anything disagree- 
able ; but then I have always dressed plainly, and 
have always assumed a severe cast of countenance, 
as though bound on affairs of state. I can't say 
that I have ever enjoyed these walks, on account 
of doing what no Englishwoman of position would 
dare to do for fear of shocking that amiable person, 
Mrs. Grundy. There is little pleasure, either, in 
walking about a town if you may not saunter and 
gaze ; but my experience teaches me that, outside 
of Paris, which is incorrigible, it is generally a wo- 
man's own fault if she is spoken to in the street by 
strange men ; and I heartily wish that, instead of 
immediately adopting European customs, American 
women would persist in preserving their own, and 
thus set a good example to the rest of creation. 
Unmarried women in Europe are suppressed to an 
intolerable extent. To me, they and their dread- 
ful maids are the most forlorn as well as the 
absurdest of sights. German and English girls 
have often come to me complaining of their fate, 
saying that it was wellnigh maddening, and that 
they envied me my liberty. " But why not strike 
out for yourselves 1 " I have asked. "It is all very 
well to say ' Strike out ' ; but suppose your parents 
11 * 



250 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

won't let yoiil Or suppose, if they do, all your 
acquaintance talk about you and take away your 
character'? What is there left but submission'? 
Thank your stars that you are American ! " What 
can one say in reply % I feel sorry for them, de- 
plore with them, and remain silent ; for it takes 
more than ordinary courage to brave public opin- 
ion, however idiotic it may be, and from ordinary 
persons you cannot expect extraordinary deeds. I 
think that I should break chains, even were I 
European ; still, I might be too cowardly. But 
the absurdity of the whole thing is, that the morals 
of these people are so elastic as to rather like in 
strangers what they condemn in their own young- 
women ! To receive, to entertain, seem to them 
comme il faut in me. They come — men and wo- 
men — quickly enough when asked, and exclaim, 
" How nice ! " Young men say, " Why cannot 
there be the same freedom and friendliness of in- 
tercourse between unmarried English men and wo- 
men as in America 1 You cannot imagine how re- 
freshing it is to enjoy a woman's acquaintance 
without fear and without reproach. The repres- 
sion system renders English girls, if not stupid, at 
least self-conscious and uninteresting, and they are 
simply intolerable as companions until after mar- 
riage, when, if there be anything clever in them. 



EUROPEAN VERSUS AMERICAN WOMEN. 251 

an assured position and contact with the world 
briners it out." This is what liberal En2;lishmen 
say, because they are Anglo-Saxon and believe in 
women. Of course, Continental men think the 
freedom of American women either immoral or 
indelicate, and assert that if no evil arises it is 
because of the absence of passion in the American 
race ; that such a condition of society is absolutely 
impossible in France. I know of no more hot- 
blooded people than the Southerners of our own 
country. I deny that Americans, North or South, 
are cold. The great difference is, not one of race, 
but of custom and education. I do not think that 
American men are naturally better than other 
men ; Heaven knows the majority of those who 
visit Paris are not. They happened to be born in 
a more enlightened hemisphere and are surrounded 
by purer influences ; that is all. While the learned 
professors of Harvard University are shaking their 
wise heads, and denying the possibility of admit- 
ting girls to their classes, predicting all sorts of hor- 
rible results from the association of the sexes, Ober- 
lin and Antioch Colleges in Ohio, and Michigan 
University, demonstrate by practical experience 
how utterly foolish are these mediaeval nightmares. 
What Cambridge is to the West, Europe is to 
Cambridge. The East seems to be a synonyme for 



252 AMERICANS ABROAD. 

whatever is retrograde. Wyoming Territory sets 
an example to States founded before it was dreamed 
of. 

Education being what it is, therefore, I am not 
attracted to Enghshwomen, married or unmar- 
ried, Enghsh women generally will not compare 
favorably with American, but there are excep- 
tions greatly to the advantage of England. We 
have had no poet equal to Mrs. Browning, no 
novelist approaching George Eliot, no scientist 
the peer of Mrs. Sonierville, no actress like Mrs. 
Siddons. There are a few women in society 
far more cultivated than any leading women of 
fashion in America; but when this is said, all 
is said. Englishwomen as a class are dead to 
vivacity, tact, taste in dress, the art of pleasing, 
everything approaching fascination and general 
intelligence. In these qualities American women 
outshine all others, and in beauty their superiority 
is universally acknowledged. Bat the exceptional 
Englishwomen are very interesting, and I have 
found friends here among my own sex that I leave 
with deep regret, knowing that I shall ne'er look 
upon their like again. Englishwomen are some- 
times beautiful ; then they are extremely so ; but 
the beauty is much more frequently statuesque 
than picturesque. There is an absence of mobility 



EUROPEAN VERSUS A}ri:RlCAN WOMF.N. 253 

of feature and vai'iety of expression that renders 
them less attractive than they otherwise woidd be. 
Indifference and listlessness of manner are consid- 
ered high style, when with us they would be 
rei^arded as a defect in breeding. To try to 
please everybody, is democratic ; to be indifferent 
to everybody is aristocratic: consequently, Amer- 
icans, men and women, are the best bred people in 
the world. I say this thoroughly aware of the 
extraordinary specimens who often visit Europe, 
in some instances making it their home, and of 
the absence in the majority of that extreme polish 
inherited by a percentage of the upper classes of 
England. Unpolished, the Enghshman is a boor, 
and the Englishwoman a boor. 

Take us for all in all, we have the best of it, 
and to that best I return with grateful delight. 
With all its faults, our Republic is the hope of the 
world. 




Cambridge : Printed hv Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 



